ABSTRACT
One feature of accounts of social change in the last decade has been the centrality of processes of consumption. One of the most radical and ambitious interpretations is offered by Zygmunt Bauman, who has developed a distinctive, insightful and challenging understanding of changes in the role of consumption in advanced societies. He puts it at the very centre of the operation of the social world today, the cement that links the social system, its institutions and the everyday experiences of individuals in the lifeworld. His general thesis is that a new epoch of western society, characterized by the cultural attributes of postmodernity, is now established. This chapter reflects on those aspects of Bauman’s analysis directly relevant to understanding the consumer in contemporary society. Bauman implies that there is a new consumer, and that though the consumer does not have complete authority, at least s/he has, through the use of markets, usurped authority from the state and from traditional arbiters of cultural correctness.
