ABSTRACT
It is hardly necessary to justify a book about “why,” a term that frustrates most everyone, from the callow child (“how come?”) to the seasoned philosopher bent on understanding. And it is doubly unnecessary to apologize when the question pertains to consumption, given the consumer society in which we live, the sheer dominance of material culture at the dawn of the twenty-first century. “Why” is a complex term, implicating many others—as the editors of this volume note, it implies who, what, where, when, and how.
