ABSTRACT
If one wishes to understand contemporary society (and particularly urban society), it is essential to understand the role of consumer culture (for a general overview of the literature in this area, see Lury 1996; Slater 1997; Miles 1998a). For many social theorists (eg, Baudrillard 1970, 1981; Bauman 1992, 1998; Campbell 1989; Featherstone 1994), the culture of consumption is now the most distinctive feature of advanced Western societies.3 Two major consequences flow from this situation. The first thing to recognise is the extent to which consumerism has permeated all levels of society. The vast majority of people in the industrialised West now live in a world in which their everyday existence is, to a greater or lesser degree, dominated by the pervasive triad of advertising/marketing, the stylisation of social life, and mass consumption. As Philip Sampson has commented: ‘Once established, such a culture of consumption is quite undiscriminating and everything becomes a consumer item, including meaning, truth and knowledge’ (Sampson quoted in Lyon 1994a: 61). Importantly, in characterising contemporary society as a consumer culture, I am not referring to particular patterns of needs and objects – a particular consumption culture – but rather to a culture of consumption (see Fromm 1976; Lasch 1979).4 To talk this way is to regard the dominant values of society as deriving from the activity of consumption.5
