ABSTRACT
It has become quite usual for sociologists to suggest that when individuals in contemporary society engage with consumer goods they are principally employing them as ‘signs’ rather than as ‘things’, actively manipulating them in such a way as to communicate information about themselves to others. It is also commonly assumed that these individuals, in their capacity as consumers, engage with goods in order to achieve ‘self-construction’ (Langman 1992: 43), or as Bauman expresses it, for the purpose of ‘fashion[ing] their subjectivity’ (Bauman 1988: 808). Consequently it is not unusual to encounter claims like that made by John Clammer to the effect that ‘Shopping is not merely the acquisition of things: it is the buying of identity’ (Clammer 1992: 195), or Beng Huat Chua's assertion that clothing ‘is a means of encoding and communicating information about the self’ (Chua 1992: 115). In other words, the perspective regards consumption as an activity in which individuals employ the symbolic meanings attached to goods in an endeavour both to construct and to inform others of their ‘lifestyle’ or ‘identity’, and hence that ‘consumption’ is, in effect, best understood as a form of communication.
