ABSTRACT
Zygmunt Bauman's understanding of consumer choice is nothing if not ambivalent and it emerges from his English-language writings as a dialectical relationship between freedom and dependency. On the one hand, Bauman is frequently seen to be singing the praises of choice as the legitimate expression of freedom. Firstly, the discussion opens by directly confronting the identified tension between freedom and dependence in Bauman's understanding of choice. Secondly, Bauman's understanding of consumer choice is considered alongside the work in this area carried out by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in order to offer some comparative analysis. Finally, the chapter considers the implications of this paradoxical nature of consumer choice and Bauman's often ambivalent position towards it. The implication of Bauman's analysis is that consumers desire freedom of choice, and ever more freedom of choice, in order to allow them to emulate the lives of the most successful and to ascend the consumer hierarchy.
