ABSTRACT
The sociology of consumption has claimed particular attention. Interest has been partially stimulated by works posing a challenge either to the Marxist approaches that reduce consumption to production; or to the economistic approaches that separate or isolate consumption from production at all, as if the former was an entity itself. The liberal theory of ‘economy and society’ was established mainly by the work of Parsons. Within this theory, Parsons drew a sharp distinction between the economy and other sub-systems of the social system as a whole, namely, polity, kinship, and cultural and community organisations. The focus of classical economic theory is certainly on the market. Adam Smith, in his book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, considered market exchange as being primary in the generation of wealth. K. Marx’s model of economic processes is different from the simple dichotomy of production and consumption constructed by the ‘economy and society’ theory.
