ABSTRACT
In many disciplines, the study of consumption has become a dynamic, changing field. A new interdisciplinary area of research on consumption has emerged in the past ten to fifteen years, drawing contributions and participants from sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, literature, and marketing – even, on occasion, from economics. (See Miller (1995) for a collection of bibliographic essays and surveys from each of the relevant disciplines.) Yet despite the central role that consumption plays in economic theory, economics has been one of the least important contributors to the new wave of research – and one of the disciplines least affected by new approaches to consumption of any variety. A recent review of innovations in neoclassical economic theory simply asserts that “the microeconomic theory of consumer choice under conditions of certainty is well developed, and has not been the subject of any significant advances in recent years” (Darnell 1992: 1).
