The Meaning of Consumption

Abstract

The “un-contestable hegemony of consumer capitalism” (Gabriel & Lang, 2006, p. 2) as the prevailing ideology of our times locates it as the primary creator and driver of production, competition, innovation, value and, latterly, values. In 1995, Miller recognised that “consumption, rather than production, was the vanguard of history” (p. 1). In that same year, the United Nations issued alarming statistics highlighting the influence of marketing on materialism and the fact that inequality in consumption was far wider than expected, severely undermining the environmental resource base. The backdrop of social theory and political economy within which consumerism and consumption are framed is a fragmented and complex one which has an unstable nature influenced by a range of complicated macro environmental factors. It is a postmodern landscape characterised by an all-pervasive consumer culture, the imperative of consumer rights and the use of consumption as a source of meaning. This chapter attempts to present a critical examination of the dominant academic, political, cultural and ecological discourses which constitute and contribute to this debate. At the epicentre is a post-modern dilemma about the delusion of choice, the illusion of freedom and the imperative of control - shifting priority from conspicuous consumption to conscientious conscience consumption.