ABSTRACT
For a time, in the 1970s and 1980s, so-called ‘collective consumption’ – the non-market provision of goods and services to correct certain persistent and widespread market failures – became one of the central concerns of urban studies (Castells 1977). For many, the evident need for collective provision emanating from the heart of the Western city exposed the limits to capitalist urban development, holding out the hope of an entirely different form of sociopolitical organization – even if, at the same time, collective consumption could just as easily be thought of as a means of perpetuating capitalism, however much it benefited members of the working class. This entire situation, however, was to witness a dramatic reversal, as one state of affairs rapidly gave way to another. By the mid-1990s, Dowding and Dunleavy (1996, 43) were lamenting the fact that ‘the collective consumption approach has not continued to develop in a unified way since the mid-1980s, and has shown some signs of overall loss of direction and vigour’. Even at the time, this was something of an understatement. With the benefit of hindsight, it seemed increasingly evident that collective consumption amounted to little more than a transitory phase on the road towards a fully fledged, market-driven form of individualized consumption (Saunders 1986a [1st edn 1981]). Ever since, the concerns raised by the debate over collective consumption have slipped from the forefront of academic and political attention. Of course, a basic concern with the urban-political processes shaping consumption opportunities within the city – and, with them, whole ways of life – has not entirely vanished from the urban research agenda. Still less have such issues vanished from the city itself. Nonetheless, these matters appear to be commanding less and less attention, as other avenues of academic enquiry have opened up, and as urban policy has adopted an increasingly neo-liberal stance.
