ABSTRACT
An enormous amount of energy has been expended over recent years in showing that consumption increasingly saturates every corner of modern life; that consumption is about far more than one-off purchasing decisions or even the aggregate economic patterns these create. Indeed, a culture – or plurality of cultures – of consumption seems to be the order of the day (Featherstone 1991; Hearn and Roseneil 1999; Jackson 1993; 1999; Lury 1996; MacClancy 1992; McCracken 1990; Miller 1987; Mort 1996; Nava 1992; Slater 1997; Storey 1999; Wernick 1991a). Yet this still begs the question of what, precisely, ‘consumption’ is. Accordingly, Campbell (1995, 102)
offers a ‘working definition’, which ‘identifies consumption as involving the selection, purchase, use, maintenance, repair and disposal of any product or service’. Such a list of the elements normally subsumed under a single term seeks to overcome the limited attitude, synonymous with neo-classical economics, that equates consumption with the act of purchase (or, from the perspective of the marketeer, with sales).1 This economistic definition is, in fact, so inadequate that it is remarkable that it could have ever commanded much credence. The strength of Campbell’s working definition lies in its departure from the abstraction of the economist to inject something of the concrete fullness of real processes at work in the world. It does so, however, in a resolutely commonsensical manner – and to this extent remains rather stunningly superficial.
