Consumer studies as critical social theory

What is it about?

This paper explores the possible contribution that consumer studies can make to critical social theory. It argues that, at its most challenging, consumer studies potentially reveals ways of avoiding functionalist canards about consumption reproducing productive arrangements and class-based forms of distinction. It does so, not by embracing postmodernist or culturalist arguments that obscure these effects of consumption, but rather by arguing for greater conceptual rigour, disciplinary mixing and attention to historical detail in the study of consumer action, which enables other possibilities to swim into sight.

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Why is it important?

Consumer studies can help to systematically reveal the extent to which collective social action is patterned by class divisions, as well as how it reinforces the ‘distinction’ that Pierre Bourdieu has helped to theorize. However, critical over-emphasis on these effects of consumer action is not only conceptually unfounded but also a standing invitation to historical reductionism. Consumer studies can challenge some of the unquestioned assumptions of critical social theory by also drawing attention to forms of collective association that do not reveal a basically class logic and to practices that create the ‘mutuality of being’ of which Marshall Sahlins speaks. In this manner it can be used to question and modify existing historical narratives, while also identifying untapped potentials for future-oriented action.

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