ABSTRACT
At least since William James and Thorstein Veblen in the late nineteenth century, we have realized that the self is intimately implicated in our consumption and that consumption is intimately implicated in the self. In this chapter I review research in support of these relationships and consider the ways in which the role of possessions in self-denition may change when these possessions are virtual and digital rather than tangible. In so doing I reconsider Charles Cooley’s notion of the looking glass self in an Internet age when others increasingly help to co-construct our sense of self and to inuence our consumption in new ways. I conclude with a brief discussion of future research questions. This includes calling for more work on cultural dierences in consumption and the self, as relatively little has been done in this area.
