Introduction

In studies of consumerism it has become almost a truism to claim that the purchase, use and display of goods in some way expresses social identities. Such acts of consumption are imagined as symbolic work in the reflexive project of the self, communicating to others messages of identity, belonging and distinction. The parallel claim that advertising is the prime mediator of these meanings has also gained axiomatic status. This conceptual framework has set up a familiar problematic; we apply individual agency by using the meanings in advertising as symbolic resources in the processes of the construction and communication of our identities. Simultaneously, advertising manipulates us and bends our individual agency to its own commercial ends.