PART I

Scope and Definition

Overview Essay

by Neva R. Goodwin

The scope of this volume must depend, in part, on how we define the subject with which we are grappling. What is a Consumer Society? Let us start with a smaller part of that question: What is consumption?

Economic and Other Views on Consumption

In the Introduction to this volume we said that we would restrict our exploration to the economic concept of "final" consumption, most often associated with households (as distinct from, for example, the consumption or use of materials by firms or by governments). This accords with most economic theory and modeling, which is concerned with the consumption of goods and services that have been purchased from a "producer" and are then in some way used by the "consumer." In the conventional view, consumption in economics is a simple, individual, readily quantified process of satisfying well-defined needs. This part will consider some alternative views that have recently gained prominence, diverging from mainstream economic theory in two directions.

The "sociological view" (held by others as well as sociologists) emphasizes the social and symbolic meanings of consumption. The "environmentalist view" emphasizes the material implications of consumption, in light of potential ecological limits to growth.

One starting point for the sociological view has come from economics. Kelvin Lancaster pointed out that what we seek when we set out to make a purchase is not a good itself, but rather its characteristics. Along similar lines, Harry Johnson has noted that what we actually consume may or may not be the good, but will, in any case, be the "service" that the good can provide. For example, when we buy a hat we are seeking the characteristics of style, warmth, rain or sun protection, and so on. We won't actually consume the hat, but will consume the services contributed by its characteristics (the feelings we receive from wearing a stylish hat, the protection and warmth it provides, and so forth). The hat can continue to provide some of these services as long as it holds together; others may be used up more quickly. For example, if "newness" is an important characteristic, that will soon wear off.

Some recent writers have extended the Lancaster/Johnson approach, moving even farther away from the actual thing (or service) that is purchased and used by the consumer. Daniel Miller and Alan Warde are two writers who especially focus on the postpurchase activities in which the consumer distances herself from the impersonality of the market transaction, actively incorporating the thing into a world of her own creation.

This contrasts with the approach of the environmentalists, who emphasize the material starting point of the whole economic process. Most consumption activities can be traced back to some extraction and use of natural resources—the environmentalists' special concern. This is expressed by Herman Daly, a leading ecological economist, when he states that "consumption is the disarrangement of matter, the using up of value added that inevitably occurs when we use goods. Consumption is the transformation of natural capital into manmade capital and ultimately to waste."

Essential Characteristics of a Consumer Society

Now we are ready to attempt a broader definition of the consumer society. One of the motives for the recent focus on this topic comes from the environmentalists' concern with the physical entropy that arises in all stages of the economic process, from extraction through production, distribution, use, and disposal, with entropy usually increased at each of these stages. Nevertheless, the environmentalists' concern for what happens to material resources is not the central feature of the prevailing definitions of the consumer society. Two quotations will give the general flavor:

A consumer society is one in which the possession and use of an increasing number and variety of goods and services is the principal cultural aspiration and the surest perceived route to personal happiness, social status, and national success.

A consumerist society makes the development of new consumer goods and the desire for them into a central dynamic of its socioeconomic life. An individual's self-respect and social esteem are strongly tied to his level of consumption relative to others in the society.

An apparently necessary, though not sufficient, characteristic of a consumer society is that "people obtain goods and services for consumption through exchange rather than self-production." The things whose consumption characterizes a consumer society are not those that are needed for subsistence, but are "valued for non-utilitarian reasons, such as status seeking, envy provocation, and novelty seeking."

One of the most common themes is that a consumer society relates individual identity to consumption, so that our judgments of ourselves and of other people relate to the "lifestyle" that is created by consumption activities. Thus Raymond Benton, Jr. defines "consumerism" as "the acceptance of consumption as the way to self-development, self-realization, and self-fulfillment," and Anderson and Wadkins contrast consumption-oriented societies with production-oriented ones, noting that, in the former, "[a]n individual's identity is tied to what one consumes rather than in a production culture where an individual's identity is more tied to what one produces."

Throughout these definitions we may see that the characteristics of a consumer society include issues to do with:

a. Commodity characteristics and the symbols associated with them.

b. The interlinked behaviors of producers (who, through advertising, etc., attempt to increase their sales) and of consumers (whose behavior is often seen as manipulated by producers).

c. Attitudes toward commodities and toward commodity-oriented behavior.

All of these issues are engaged, for example, in the attention that has been paid to mass production. The characteristics of mass-produced items (the fact that they arrive on the market in large numbers, all alike, and are produced at a relatively low marginal cost) make it possible—and necessary—for producers to induce most members of a society (not just the elite) to become habituated to consuming purchased items, and to purchasing more than they need for bare subsistence. The behavior of producers and consumers are to some...