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Consumption and Its Consequences
This is a book for those looking for different answers to some of today's most fundamental questions. What is a consumer society? Does being a consumer make us less authentic or more materialistic? How and why do we shop? How should we understand the economy? Is our seemingly insatiable desire for goods destroying the planet? Can we reconcile curbs on consumption with goals such as reducing poverty and social inequality? Miller responds to these questions by proposing feasible and, where possible, currently available alternatives, drawn mainly from his own original ethnographic research. Here you will find shopping analysed as a technology of love, clothing that sidesteps politics in tackling issues of immigration. There is an alternative theory of value that does not assume the economy is intelligent, scientific, moral or immoral. We see Coca-Cola as an example of localization, not globalization. We learn why the response to climate change will work only when we reverse our assumptions about the impact of consumption on citizens. Given the evidence that consumption is now central to the way we create and maintain our core values and relationships, the conclusions differ dramatically from conventional and accepted views as to its consequences for humanity and the planet.
200 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2012
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149 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Miller
246 books62 followersDaniel Miller is Professor of Anthropology at UCL, author/editor of 37 books including Tales from Facebook, Digital Anthropology (Ed. with H. Horst), The Internet: an Ethnographic Approach (with D. Slater), Webcam (with J. Sinanan), The Comfort of Things, A Theory of Shopping, and Stuff.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 11, 2016
If you review the logic of the book as a whole, there is a central argument that most discussions around the consequences of consumption stem from a mistaken understanding of consumption itself as a process.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 374, loc. 5728-5816
One of the leitmotifs of both this book and its predecessor, Stuff, is that research that depends entirely upon language is highly suspect. What people say is more often a legitimation than an explanation for what they do.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 164, loc. 2501-2503
my study stems from the perspective of material culture as described in the book Stuff, which refuses to reduce objects to their symbolic relationship to persons. Instead we focus upon the way material things express our relationships and our values, sometimes as individuals, sometimes in relation to a family, as in shopping, sometimes through the forging of a highly nationalistic culture, as in Trinidadian Christmas.
The single main problem with conventional writing about consumption is that it seems to consist largely of authors who wish to claim that they are deep by trying to show how everyone else is shallow.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 204, loc. 3125-3135
The first three [chapters] are concerned to establish what consumption is and what its more direct consequences for society, families and individuals might be. So chapter 3 is a study of shopping, as the acquisition of goods, and the consequences of shopping, mainly for families, though also the wider ethical issues.
Chapter 4 focuses upon denim blue jeans. It tries to answer the simple question of why we buy so many blue jeans and then enumerates a range of consequences that follow that choice.
Chapter 5 looks at the connections to and consequences for the wider political economy. We then return in the final chapter to our three protagonists, who argue the implications for climate change.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 79, loc. 1203-1211
The core three chapters in this book provide evidence for an alternative view on what consumption is. The chapters on ethnographic studies of Trinidad as a consumer society, shopping in London and why we buy blue jeans are intended to convince you that consumption is mainly about quite different things. Status emulation and materialism may exist, but they are of minor relevance compared to the incorporation of this vast array of material difference in the expression of complex social relationships and wider cosmologies
A Consumer Society:
The intention of the current chapter is to look at what happens when an island becomes a consumer society and examines four aspects of that process. It starts with a consideration of the growing role of objects as goods in expressing the values of that society. A study of Coca-Cola asks whether this means that the island is being swamped by and homogenised into a global commodity culture. This leads to a short, more theoretical excursion in the third section. I argue that these research findings should lead us to question the most common, rather dismissive, approach to consumption in social science. Rather than seeing consumers merely as the passive end point of economic activity, I argue that they actively transform their world. They too see both the negative and the positive consequences of consumption and have their own critiques. So the final section on Christmas becomes an example of this. It shows both how the people of Trinidad identify materialism as one of the problematic consequences of the rise of consumption and one of the ways in which they try to deal with this problem. Taken together, this chapter addresses several of the key consequences of a society becoming a consumer society. By ‘consumer society’, I mean one in which commodities are increasingly used to express the core values of that society but also become the principal form through which people come to see, recognise and understand those values.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 80, loc. 1212-122
Anyone for a Coke?:
A consideration of the growing role of objects as goods in expressing the values of that society. A study of Coca-Cola asks whether this means that the island is being swamped by and homogenised into a global commodity culture.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 80, loc. 1212-122
It shows how quickly it is goods such as cars, foods and gifts become the principal idiom for expressing core values.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 100, loc. 1531-1535
So the examples of cars and Coca-Cola are to show how consumption becomes an aspect of culture. They are not intended as claims that these goods are good or bad.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 102, loc. 1561-1563
Consumption has many consequences. In the final chapter we will address climate change, but first I want to establish both just what it means to become a consumer society and its consequences for that population... The analysis has been of Trinidadian cosmology as expressed in the logic of material culture and Christmas as an anti-individualistic and anti-materialist festival. The chapter has been much more about consensus than about competition...The argument has been that this is culture, the idiom by which we become and subsequently understand who we are. This chapter is not an argument that consumer culture is necessarily beneficial.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 118, loc. 1800-1835
Why we Shop:
In this chapter, I summarise the results of that research in three sections. The first two are theories of shopping, which are also concerned with its more immediate consequences for the family and for individuals. In the third section I tackle the wider ethics and consequences of shopping.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 127, loc. 1935-1937
Peanut-Butter Theory:
Shopping is an attempt to diminish the distance between the person for whom one is shopping (which is often oneself), as an expression of the normative, and the actual person. You buy the only pair of jeans that you think a husband should wear and that your actual husband will wear, and then cook yourself a dinner that is the compromise between the sensible diet you should be on and the cravings you feel.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 148, loc. 2258-2268
Sacrifice:
I would have to demonstrate that shopping somehow turns expenditure into a devotional ritual that both affirms and constitutes some transcendent force, which can then be used in turn to sacralise social orders. But, yes, that’s pretty much exactly what I intend to do.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 151, loc. 2305-2309
Why We don’t Shop Ethically:
The problem is not that people are hedonistic, individualistic and materialistic, but precisely the opposite. It is because they are thrifty and moral that they fail to be ethical.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 167, loc. 2559-2581
Why Denim?:
In this chapter we complete the trilogy by focusing on just one consumer object – denim blue jeans – and one very simple question – why do so many people wear them?
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 175, loc. 2679-2680
Once again, I will start by showing why this question cannot be reduced to the most immediate or obvious answers, such as its benefits to commerce. Instead we need to address what people understand by and intend in wearing jeans. But, as in the last two chapters, the consequences of wearing jeans will be shown to reach well beyond intentionality, and this is why we need anthropology and other academic tools to examine these questions and not merely reiterate the views of informants.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 175, loc. 2680-2684
What I hope this chapter can communicate, in combination with the two previous chapters, is that consumption is a very different beast from that which appears in most other books on this topic. This only becomes evident when we force the focus upon consumption in and of itself instead of projecting upon it some other argument or cause.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 204, loc. 3117-3120
The Stupid Economy:
A book that deals seriously with consumption and its consequences might be expected to devote a chapter also to the wider political economy, since it is assumed that the economy is the major cause of consumption. In this chapter, however, I will treat the political economy more as a consequence than a cause.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 214, loc. 3269-3272
The first part of this chapter summarises a study of the advertising industry... It must then follow that we have to see advertising as a consequence of consumption precisely to the degree that it is not found to be a cause of consumption. I will then argue the same for the political economy more generally, encompassing the economic side, exemplified by the rise of finance, and also the political side, which will be illustrated by the example of audit. My aim in this chapter is not limited to some reversal of the assumed relationship between production and consumption. Having tried to change our understanding of what consumption is, I also seek to challenge our conventional view of what the economy is. Specifically I want to refute assumptions that the economy is essentially rational, scientific, intelligent, moral or immoral. Instead I want to argue that we will only understand the economy when we appreciate that it is fundamentally and quite remarkably stupid. Having made these arguments, I will then summarise the points and the connections between them, using a theory called virtualism, which returns us to consumption as the primary legitimation of these developments. Finally I will propose an alternative theory of value, the term which underlies most attempts to legitimise economic activity. Much of the discussion is necessarily abstract and may seem like a detour. But I believe it is crucial to our understanding of these wider consequences of consumption. When the going gets heavy, there is nothing to stop you skipping to the next chapter, which is a good deal lighter in tone. Why advertising?
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 215, loc. 3293-3310
To conclude, this book is clearly no more anti-business than it is anti-consumption. It has on many occasions acknowledged the contribution of commercial enterprise to the reduction of poverty and the increase of welfare. It has defended the role of consumption, on the same grounds, and respected people’s demands for goods rather than dismissing them as signs that they are deluded, stupid or merely fooled by advertising. At the same time it is remarkable that, even following a vast financial crisis, where the prime culprit seems to have been a financial system that retained close links with idealised academic models of economics and thereby lost almost all contact with a more grounded world, we see almost no serious attempts to challenge or curb that system. The interests of the financial system remain privileged over the interests of those it was supposed to serve, including the interests of ordinary commerce.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 270, loc. 4128-4136
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 374, loc. 5728-5816
One of the leitmotifs of both this book and its predecessor, Stuff, is that research that depends entirely upon language is highly suspect. What people say is more often a legitimation than an explanation for what they do.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 164, loc. 2501-2503
my study stems from the perspective of material culture as described in the book Stuff, which refuses to reduce objects to their symbolic relationship to persons. Instead we focus upon the way material things express our relationships and our values, sometimes as individuals, sometimes in relation to a family, as in shopping, sometimes through the forging of a highly nationalistic culture, as in Trinidadian Christmas.
The single main problem with conventional writing about consumption is that it seems to consist largely of authors who wish to claim that they are deep by trying to show how everyone else is shallow.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 204, loc. 3125-3135
The first three [chapters] are concerned to establish what consumption is and what its more direct consequences for society, families and individuals might be. So chapter 3 is a study of shopping, as the acquisition of goods, and the consequences of shopping, mainly for families, though also the wider ethical issues.
Chapter 4 focuses upon denim blue jeans. It tries to answer the simple question of why we buy so many blue jeans and then enumerates a range of consequences that follow that choice.
Chapter 5 looks at the connections to and consequences for the wider political economy. We then return in the final chapter to our three protagonists, who argue the implications for climate change.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 79, loc. 1203-1211
The core three chapters in this book provide evidence for an alternative view on what consumption is. The chapters on ethnographic studies of Trinidad as a consumer society, shopping in London and why we buy blue jeans are intended to convince you that consumption is mainly about quite different things. Status emulation and materialism may exist, but they are of minor relevance compared to the incorporation of this vast array of material difference in the expression of complex social relationships and wider cosmologies
A Consumer Society:
The intention of the current chapter is to look at what happens when an island becomes a consumer society and examines four aspects of that process. It starts with a consideration of the growing role of objects as goods in expressing the values of that society. A study of Coca-Cola asks whether this means that the island is being swamped by and homogenised into a global commodity culture. This leads to a short, more theoretical excursion in the third section. I argue that these research findings should lead us to question the most common, rather dismissive, approach to consumption in social science. Rather than seeing consumers merely as the passive end point of economic activity, I argue that they actively transform their world. They too see both the negative and the positive consequences of consumption and have their own critiques. So the final section on Christmas becomes an example of this. It shows both how the people of Trinidad identify materialism as one of the problematic consequences of the rise of consumption and one of the ways in which they try to deal with this problem. Taken together, this chapter addresses several of the key consequences of a society becoming a consumer society. By ‘consumer society’, I mean one in which commodities are increasingly used to express the core values of that society but also become the principal form through which people come to see, recognise and understand those values.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 80, loc. 1212-122
Anyone for a Coke?:
A consideration of the growing role of objects as goods in expressing the values of that society. A study of Coca-Cola asks whether this means that the island is being swamped by and homogenised into a global commodity culture.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 80, loc. 1212-122
It shows how quickly it is goods such as cars, foods and gifts become the principal idiom for expressing core values.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 100, loc. 1531-1535
So the examples of cars and Coca-Cola are to show how consumption becomes an aspect of culture. They are not intended as claims that these goods are good or bad.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 102, loc. 1561-1563
Consumption has many consequences. In the final chapter we will address climate change, but first I want to establish both just what it means to become a consumer society and its consequences for that population... The analysis has been of Trinidadian cosmology as expressed in the logic of material culture and Christmas as an anti-individualistic and anti-materialist festival. The chapter has been much more about consensus than about competition...The argument has been that this is culture, the idiom by which we become and subsequently understand who we are. This chapter is not an argument that consumer culture is necessarily beneficial.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 118, loc. 1800-1835
Why we Shop:
In this chapter, I summarise the results of that research in three sections. The first two are theories of shopping, which are also concerned with its more immediate consequences for the family and for individuals. In the third section I tackle the wider ethics and consequences of shopping.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 127, loc. 1935-1937
Peanut-Butter Theory:
Shopping is an attempt to diminish the distance between the person for whom one is shopping (which is often oneself), as an expression of the normative, and the actual person. You buy the only pair of jeans that you think a husband should wear and that your actual husband will wear, and then cook yourself a dinner that is the compromise between the sensible diet you should be on and the cravings you feel.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 148, loc. 2258-2268
Sacrifice:
I would have to demonstrate that shopping somehow turns expenditure into a devotional ritual that both affirms and constitutes some transcendent force, which can then be used in turn to sacralise social orders. But, yes, that’s pretty much exactly what I intend to do.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 151, loc. 2305-2309
Why We don’t Shop Ethically:
The problem is not that people are hedonistic, individualistic and materialistic, but precisely the opposite. It is because they are thrifty and moral that they fail to be ethical.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 167, loc. 2559-2581
Why Denim?:
In this chapter we complete the trilogy by focusing on just one consumer object – denim blue jeans – and one very simple question – why do so many people wear them?
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 175, loc. 2679-2680
Once again, I will start by showing why this question cannot be reduced to the most immediate or obvious answers, such as its benefits to commerce. Instead we need to address what people understand by and intend in wearing jeans. But, as in the last two chapters, the consequences of wearing jeans will be shown to reach well beyond intentionality, and this is why we need anthropology and other academic tools to examine these questions and not merely reiterate the views of informants.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 175, loc. 2680-2684
What I hope this chapter can communicate, in combination with the two previous chapters, is that consumption is a very different beast from that which appears in most other books on this topic. This only becomes evident when we force the focus upon consumption in and of itself instead of projecting upon it some other argument or cause.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 204, loc. 3117-3120
The Stupid Economy:
A book that deals seriously with consumption and its consequences might be expected to devote a chapter also to the wider political economy, since it is assumed that the economy is the major cause of consumption. In this chapter, however, I will treat the political economy more as a consequence than a cause.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 214, loc. 3269-3272
The first part of this chapter summarises a study of the advertising industry... It must then follow that we have to see advertising as a consequence of consumption precisely to the degree that it is not found to be a cause of consumption. I will then argue the same for the political economy more generally, encompassing the economic side, exemplified by the rise of finance, and also the political side, which will be illustrated by the example of audit. My aim in this chapter is not limited to some reversal of the assumed relationship between production and consumption. Having tried to change our understanding of what consumption is, I also seek to challenge our conventional view of what the economy is. Specifically I want to refute assumptions that the economy is essentially rational, scientific, intelligent, moral or immoral. Instead I want to argue that we will only understand the economy when we appreciate that it is fundamentally and quite remarkably stupid. Having made these arguments, I will then summarise the points and the connections between them, using a theory called virtualism, which returns us to consumption as the primary legitimation of these developments. Finally I will propose an alternative theory of value, the term which underlies most attempts to legitimise economic activity. Much of the discussion is necessarily abstract and may seem like a detour. But I believe it is crucial to our understanding of these wider consequences of consumption. When the going gets heavy, there is nothing to stop you skipping to the next chapter, which is a good deal lighter in tone. Why advertising?
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 215, loc. 3293-3310
To conclude, this book is clearly no more anti-business than it is anti-consumption. It has on many occasions acknowledged the contribution of commercial enterprise to the reduction of poverty and the increase of welfare. It has defended the role of consumption, on the same grounds, and respected people’s demands for goods rather than dismissing them as signs that they are deluded, stupid or merely fooled by advertising. At the same time it is remarkable that, even following a vast financial crisis, where the prime culprit seems to have been a financial system that retained close links with idealised academic models of economics and thereby lost almost all contact with a more grounded world, we see almost no serious attempts to challenge or curb that system. The interests of the financial system remain privileged over the interests of those it was supposed to serve, including the interests of ordinary commerce.
Daniel Miller, Consumption and Its Consequences, pg. 270, loc. 4128-4136
February 25, 2021
From Marxist view, commodities are important for the analysis of capitalism, social relationship, and how the society works as a circuit process. Firstly, capitalism changed the human relationships by commodity. In other words, commodities which represent products of labor are indistinguishable and that’s why humans are alienated. Secondly, commodities are not objects because they are treated with their use-value. In this way, social relationships exist in the relationship of commodities or commodity exchanges. For a worker, his relationship with another worker relays on the commodities through the bridge of labor; neither of them own the products, but they both get wages as a representation of labor. Capitalism deprives humans of the right to ‘own’ something, and everything is commodified.
Production and consumption are not separable from each other. This is not only a reflection for Marxist theory in macro level, but also presents in micro level- whether a company can make profits standing out of many other opponents. The circularity of coolhunting is a good example. Some coolhunters make it faster to make design idea realistic and to follow the mainstream on the street. On the one hand, consumers purchase fashionable apparels for one season and another; on the other hand, the designers rely on coolhunters who go out and take back the style of cool kids on the street. It’s a two-way intensification. It turns out that the faster the new apparels produced the more fanatical is the consumers to pursue fashion. The competitions enable capitalism to develop itself making lots of progress. Another contributor is advertisement. The analysis of DDB is distinct from many others because Bernbach adopted cultural criticism way for persuasion. Though they seem to be critical, I think they just disguise themselves to be innocent or critical. Making something authentic and realistic is exactly what an ad agency wants to do, and obviously Bernbach succeeded.
Production and consumption are not separable from each other. This is not only a reflection for Marxist theory in macro level, but also presents in micro level- whether a company can make profits standing out of many other opponents. The circularity of coolhunting is a good example. Some coolhunters make it faster to make design idea realistic and to follow the mainstream on the street. On the one hand, consumers purchase fashionable apparels for one season and another; on the other hand, the designers rely on coolhunters who go out and take back the style of cool kids on the street. It’s a two-way intensification. It turns out that the faster the new apparels produced the more fanatical is the consumers to pursue fashion. The competitions enable capitalism to develop itself making lots of progress. Another contributor is advertisement. The analysis of DDB is distinct from many others because Bernbach adopted cultural criticism way for persuasion. Though they seem to be critical, I think they just disguise themselves to be innocent or critical. Making something authentic and realistic is exactly what an ad agency wants to do, and obviously Bernbach succeeded.
February 9, 2023
Really intersting insights on the nature of consumption in different cultures. A little hard to follow when it comes to the economics talk. But that may say more about my economics knowledge than the writing so YMMV.
Overall, I really enjoyed it as a big proponent of minimizing consumption and Circular Economy.
Overall, I really enjoyed it as a big proponent of minimizing consumption and Circular Economy.
May 19, 2020
It'd be a 3 star, but the self-indulgence knocks it down a peg.
May 8, 2022
Why write one book when you can write 16% of six books?
Read
November 4, 2025yasss miller with the more accessible theory
April 27, 2017
Danny Miller continues to succeed in making anthropology accessible and entertaining without sacrificing an iota of scholarship.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews