ABSTRACT
Image and Metaphor At first glance, what appears to distinguish the economies of modern, Western, industrialized countries from others is the sheer number and variety of products. While this provides a convenient yardstick for those who like to measure the superiority of our standard of living by counting telephones, toilets, and television sets, another great difference, no less dramatic in scale, often goes unnoticed-the layers of images and symbols that surround us relating these products to our personal happiness and social success. Just because it fits so snugly and comfortably, our thick cloak of symbols seems to be a natural part of our being. The consumer society constructed this field of symbols and implanted it at the center of marketplace activity, causing a profound transformation in social life. The nature of this transformation, the change in the social function of goods from being primarily satisfiers of wants to being primarily communicators of meanings, will be explored in this and the succeeding chapter.
