ABSTRACT

In this final chapter we shall gradually move towards a number of more general considerations raised by our focus on the use of time as the (or at the very least one) central aspect of consumer theory. We begin cautiously, however, by first presenting a mere generalization of what has gone before and then turning to consider some implications of our time-centred consumer theory for a number of issues not always seen as falling within the scope of the theory of consumption. We then conclude by broadening our scope, in the spirit of Alfred Marshall’s insistence that, ‘It is not true…that the “Theory of Consumption is the scientific basis of economics”’ (1920, p. 90), by sketching out (no more) how a time-use consumer theory might link up with other strands of economic and other social theory.