ABSTRACT
Many analysesof modern society share the idea that somecrucial changehas taken place in the action orientation of the modern consumer. A new hedonistic consumer has come into being, whose demands are no longer regulated by an ‘economy of needs’ but by an ‘economy of desire and dreams’, or the longing for something new and unexperienced. In characterizing the new middle class as the main carrier of the hedonistic ethos of consumption, Bourdieu (1984: 365-72) emphasized that the new consumer wants everything at once and without having to sacrifice anything. The ethics is an ‘ethics of fun’. The emergence of this new ethos of consumerism has often, especially in the American tradition, been thought to have resulted from transformations in the emotional make-up of the family (e.g. absent fathers), the cultural importance of youth, or the growing importance of free time and the subsequent erosion of the work ethic.1
