Contradictions Of Consumption

by Tim Edwards

??i??A critical introduction to the field that manages to be both considered and argumentative, and stands out distinctly from the more 'culturalist' alternatives available ...it should provide a strong text for undergraduate courses??i??i??' - Don Slater, Goldsmiths College, University of London. How has consumer society developed? What are the social divisions, politics and policies associated with consumption? How do consumer practices have social significance? This lively and accessible text shows how consumption is increasingly important in dominating our individual lives and indeed the entire development and direction of contemporary society, nationally and internationally. Consumption is inherently contradictory in its nature and meaning. The most rapturous form of shopping, for example clothes purchasing on unlimited plastic in a shopping mall, may turn into the most tortuous as the shopper tires, the clothes don't fit, and the car park is cramped. Tim Edwards argues that the practice of consumption itself and consumer society more widely is often socially divisive and iniquitous, and examines the extent to which consumer power is real or illusory. He provides a thorough analysis and critique of the theories, practices and politics of consumer society. In particular, this book addresses the social divisions of consumption through topics such as fashion, advertising and marketing, as well as more classical and contemporary theories of consumer society. It will appeal to a wide range of students in sociology, cultural studies, social policy and the politics of identity.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fabulous rebuttal of many academic and even more economic and popular celebrations of consumption as a sign of a new way of living, of a way to mark and create identities, and as a means of liberation. Adopting a broadly sceptical Marxist/materialist (that is sceptical of a lot of current postmodern and old and new Marxism) Edwards sees consumer society (which for him is more than but includes consumer culture) as based in both desire and hunger, and as maintaining and reinforcing in new and old ways forms of social division – class, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity and so forth. Alongside these crucial points he argues for the separation of mundane consumption (the torture of supermarket food shopping and purchase of household services) from more unusual or spectacular forms of shopping (the rapture of foreign holidays and trawling the shopping mall to try but not necessarily buy).

Sophisticated, subtle, engaging and sceptical, this book gets beyond many of the more 'culturalist' analyses to be fair to those it critiques but to be forceful in its case, to assert the vital role that production makes in shaping consumption, to remind us that the consumption by the wealthy in the West is often at the expense of the West's not-so-wealthy and many of the global poor who make what we consume. During the early 1980s, workers at a car plant near where I lived made a T-shirt with the slogan; GM, the car we make but can't afford to buy – Edwards's rich analysis of the politics of consumption reminded of that inequality as an expression of the exploitation that underpins the stuff we purchase.