Identifying Consumption: Subjects and Objects in Consumer Society

by Robert G. Dunn

Overview

Identifying Consumption illustrates how an individual’s buying habits are shaped by the dynamics of the consumer marketplace—and thus how consumption and identity inform each other. Robert Dunn brings together the various theories of spending and develops a mode of analysis concentrating on the individual subjectivity of consumption. By doing so, he addresses how we spend and its relationship with status and lifestyle.

Dunn provides a comprehensive guide to the study of modern consumer behavior before summarizing and critiquing the major theories of consumption. At this juncture, he proposes a method of analysis that focuses on the significance of status and lifestyle in social relations that can help explain how the consumer marketplace is shaped. He concludes by raising issues about different ways of consuming and the relationship between consumption and identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592138715
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	06/28/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	282 KB

About the Author

Robert G. Dunn is Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, California State University, East Bay, and author of Identity Crises: A Social Critique of Postmodernity.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

PART ONE-COMMODITIES, OBJECTS, THE SUBJECT

Chapter I    The Triumph of the Commodity: Theoretical Lineages
Capitalist Modernity: Commodities, Self, Objectification, Domination
Consumption as Status Seeking: Veblen and His Heirs
Desire and Pleasure: Consumerism and the Ethos of Hedonism
Conclusion: From Need to Desire

Chapter II    Culturalizing Consumption
The Signing of Consumer Culture
The Legacy of Cultural Studies
Conclusion: Signification and Symbolization

Chapter III    The Subjectivity of Consumption
Deconstructing the Commodity
Further Deconstruction: The Sign/Symbol Matrix
Dynamics of Insatiability
Consumer Culture and the Self: Hedonism and Narcissism
Conclusion: Pleasure, Self, Identity
                  
PART TWO-LIFESTYLE, STATUS, IDENTITY

Chapter IV     The Social Relations of Consumption
Status, Lifestyle, Identity    
Dynamics of the Consumer Marketplace
The Diderot Effect
Inclusionary Consumer Marketing: Notes on IKEA Egalitarianism
The New Emulative Spending
Conclusion: Competition, Emulation, Belonging

Chapter V     The Identity of Consumption
Conceptions of Identity: Modern and Postmodern Discourses
Accounting for Identity: Problems with Actually Existing Social
Constructionism
Accounting for Identity: Meadian Constructionism
Codified and Individuated Modes of Identity Formation: A General
Consumption Schema
Conclusion: Reconsidering Consumption and Identity

Conclusion