ABSTRACT
Consumption theory should benefit from the concept of ‘reflexivity’. To substantiate this statement, this chapter firstly presents ‘lifestyles’ as the modus vivendi of consumers who – aware of it or not – have developed ‘consumption projects’. We review structuralist and individualist approaches to reveal some of their limitations, which derive from the scant attention they give to the relationship between agents and their socio-cultural context. We will argue for the need to study the way in which people take into account the socio-cultural context in which they develop their projects. We then examine a few interesting illustrations that support our claim. As a last step, we discuss how to introduce into consumption studies not only the notion of reflexivity, but also its different modalities. These different reflexive modes would yield different types of ‘reflexive consumers’, each with its own features, which we propose as a starting point for further research.
