Consumer Culture and Commodification
How goods become carriers of meaning and identity, and how the logic of the commodity reshapes everyday life under consumer capitalism.
Definition
Consumer culture is a form of social organisation in which the consumption of mass-produced commodities is central to the construction of identity, status and meaning; commodification is the process by which goods, experiences and relationships are turned into things bought and sold.
Scope
This area examines popular culture as consumer culture: the transformation of cultural forms and social relations into commodities, the meanings people make through what they buy and use, the role of advertising and branding, and the material things that furnish everyday life. It draws on Marxist theories of commodification, sociological accounts of taste and distinction, and studies of consumption as an active, productive practice. It does not cover production-side culture-industry theory in depth, which sits under theories of popular culture.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How does commodification transform cultural forms and social relations into things to be bought and sold?
- Do consumers passively absorb the meanings of commodities, or actively make their own meanings through consumption?
- How do taste and consumption mark and reproduce social distinctions?
- What roles do advertising, branding and material goods play in everyday identity?
Key concepts
- commodification
- commodity fetishism
- sign value
- conspicuous consumption
- taste and distinction
- cultural capital
- consumer society
Key theories
- Commodity fetishism and commodification
- Drawing on Marx, this account holds that under capitalism goods come to appear as bearers of value in themselves, obscuring the social labour behind them and extending the commodity form into ever more areas of life.
- Consumption and distinction
- Bourdieu argues that taste in cultural and consumer goods is structured by class and functions to mark and reproduce social distinctions, with consumption serving as a form of cultural capital.
- Sign value and the consumer society
- Baudrillard contends that in consumer society commodities are consumed for their meaning as signs within a system of differences, rather than simply for their use or exchange value.
History
Early critiques of consumer culture drew on Marx's analysis of the commodity and Veblen's account of conspicuous consumption. In the post-war decades the rapid growth of mass consumption prompted sustained theorisation: Baudrillard's The Consumer Society (1970) and Bourdieu's Distinction (1979) reframed consumption as a system of signs and a field of class struggle, while cultural studies from the 1980s increasingly stressed the active and creative dimensions of consumption against accounts of manipulated consumers.
Debates
- Manipulation versus agency
- Whether consumer culture manipulates people into false needs and passivity, or whether consumption is a meaningful, creative and sometimes resistant practice.
Key figures
- Karl Marx
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Jean Baudrillard
- Mike Featherstone
- Thorstein Veblen
Related topics
Seminal works
- baudrillard1970
- bourdieu1979
- featherstone1991
Frequently asked questions
- Is consuming popular culture inherently uncritical or conformist?
- Much cultural studies work argues the opposite: people actively interpret, rework and personalise the commodities they consume, so consumption can express identity, community and even resistance, not merely conformity.