ABSTRACT
Being is social. We are social beings by birth. We are the fusion of two gametes. The first milk we drank came from our mother. Our life, in all its detail, is life in association. That we can consume in any kind of asocial way is unthinkable. So, it seems odd that less than scant reference was made after Alfred Marshall to the social determination of wants and to the externalities of such socialization. In consumer society, people are as are the things they possess. The more one owns the better one's place. This is the social viability criterion, or criterion of success. Commodity ownership is power for other-exclusion. As such, it confers a sense and an image of Self, an identity, in a society that pays little regard for intellectual, moral or aesthetic excellence. The score is finally decided with consumption, where preferences are formed in a swirl of associative emotions and influences. The enjoyment one draws from the car or the house that one owns, the clothes one wears or the concerts one attends depends on how much one is envied for affording these. Choices are structured based on socially accumulated experience. The knowledge upon which value-snatching demand is structured is cultural capital, needed to meet social standards.
