ABSTRACT
The noun consumerism is formed when the term “consume,” which indicates the action or the effect of making use of goods and spending energy, is coupled with the suffix-ism. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, described a phenomenon of Modernity whereby a society of producers, guided by their work ethic, transforms into a society of consumers which adhere primarily to the “aesthetic of consumption.” Various cultural and political movements and subcultures incorporate criticism of consumerism as part of their identity. The works of French thinkers Micheal de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu, Claude Grignon, and Jean Claude Passeron are also notable. The reformulation of a sociocultural theory of consumption in Latin America has different, mingled beginnings. It deserves mention that the structuralist mode, with its emphasis on the ideological dimension of the message, fell into disuse toward the end of the 1960s and throughout the following decade. North American cultural studies have offered diverse ways of approaching the study of consumption.
