Consumerism

Consumerism refers to a social and economic orientation in which the acquisition of goods and services is treated as a central goal of life and a primary source of identity, satisfaction, and status. The term also describes the movement to protect consumers’ rights against unsafe or deceptive practices, though in sociology it usually denotes the cultural dominance of consumption. Thorstein Veblen criticized conspicuous consumption among the leisure class, and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued that the culture industry manufactures false needs. Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man claimed that affluent societies integrate people through consumption and dampen critical thought, while Guy Debord’s society of the spectacle described a world in which images and commodities mediate social life. Jean Baudrillard analyzed consumption as a system of signs, and Zygmunt Bauman argued that people in liquid modernity are judged by their capacity to consume. Juliet Schor documented the cycle of work and spend in the United States, and Naomi Klein criticized brand power. Sociologists also note that consumers use goods creatively and politically, as in boycotts and ethical consumption. Consumerism remains central to research on capitalism, inequality, identity, environmental sustainability, and mass media.