ABSTRACT
Recognizing consumption's symbolic dimension rescues large areas of economic activity from the charge of being unproductive. Marketers, advertisers, customer advisors and the many others engaged in creating and preserving commercial imagery cease to represent an accretion of “transaction cost”, incurred in the attempt to move more material output. Instead, these become sources of added value in their own right — creating and continuing the symbolism that keeps expenditure rising once its purely functional purposes are achieved. Advertising professionals in mid-nineteenth century England and America were already proclaiming their active contribution to progress and prosperity (Turner 1965: 87–91). The ranks of “new cultural intermediaries” (Bourdieu 1984: Ch 2) have since expanded to include “those in media, design, fashion, advertising, and ‘para’ intellectual information occupations, whose jobs entail… the production, marketing and dissemination of symbolic goods” (Featherstone 1991: 19).
