Consumption as a Social Process (original) (raw)

2014, Journal of Economic Issues

ABSTRACT This article discusses consumption as a social process that is part of social provisioning and is in an evolutionary interplay with other social processes. The analysis provides grounds for a context-specific research that explores consumption in the context of a culture-nature life process, and draws on material from various disciplines. The article seeks to contribute to the literature on social provisioning as an organizing concept in heterodox economics. The first section explains what is meant by social process and delineates its elements. The second section formulates a categorization of social processes, and locates a consumption process within a system of culture-nature life processes. The rest of the article delineates the elements of the consumption process, providing illustrations based on literature from various disciplines. Specifically, the third section discusses consumption activities. The fourth section discusses institutions and systems of provision of goods and services. The fifth section applies the concept of habits of life and thought to the consumption process. Finally, the article concludes that the formulated analysis transcends dualisms such as social-economic, cultural-material, society-nature, and micro-macro, and draws implications for heterodox economics.

Discourse on the Consumerist Community Consumption

This article aims at analyzing community consumption as a practice model which will create a new model in the understanding of the consumption to the consumptive pattern. In its development, community consumption pattern brings about a shift because of technology and modern facility availability. An approach used to write this report is library research, while the analysis technique applied is a content analysis aiming at getting a valid inference and can be reobserved based on is context. The presence of technology as a representation of facility in the fulfillment of needs are able to encourage the creation of social change, like the spreading of consumerist culture, the change of fashion and lifestyle mode where this condition is institutionalized in a community culture structure so that consuming goods do not only depend on the needs logic but also cover to someone's emotional substance. That situation systematically shifts traditional values and directs to the global behavior. Consumption towards the construction of consumptive society becomes a conceptual and historical illustration to understand the consumption shifting to the consumptive practice.

Consumption Epiphany: From Abstract to Material

Italian Sociological Review, 2016

This paper aims to offer a reflection on the latest developments concerning the study of consumption in the field of sociology in order to outline a conceptual, albeit not comprehensive, map. Specifically, the intention of this paper is to map a precise point of departure for the approaches which are currently better able to interpret the processes of consumption that characterise modern societies. The literature review has clearly shown a convergence of interests on consumption practices that focuses on material and tangible issues. Approaches that refer to the theories of practice, material culture and studies on science and technology (STS) inspired by the actor network theory (ANT) share an interest in this aspect by offering viewpoints which, although specific, are definitely complementary. The sociology of consumption, through an approach that is both multifaceted and focused, has a major opportunity to provide interpretative frameworks which are increasingly articulate and p...

Social Provisioning within a Culture-Nature Life-Process

The article seeks to contribute to the literature on developing the concept of social provisioning as an organizing concept of heterodox economic analysis. Social provisioning is formulated as an amalgamation of social processes within a broader culture-nature life-process. The objective is to provide analytical details into the scope of social provisioning analysis that further enables a critical and contextual inquiry about capitalism. First, the article provides a theoretical and methodological context of social provisioning analysis. The article proceeds to delineate three main categories of processes: biological and geographical processes; processes that are usually analyzed as personal characteristics or as social categories (e.g. gender), and processes defined around social activities (e.g. consumption). The delineated system of processes offers diverse entry points into analysis of social provisioning, that is, beyond consumption, production, and distribution. Further, it transcends the culture-economy, nature-economy, nature-culture, and micro-macro dualisms in heterodox economic theory.

The Sociology of Consumption

Theorizing about consumption has been a part of the field of sociology since its earliest days, dating back, at least implicitly, to the work of Karl Marx in the midto late nineteenth century. However, Thorstein Veblen's (1899) The Theory of the Leisure Class is generally seen as the first major theoretical work to take consumption as its primary focus (although in the body of his, work Veblen, like most other classic thinkers, focused on production - industry and business - not consumption). Despite these early roots, research on consumption began in earnest in the second half of the twentieth century in Europe, especially Great Britain. Interest in the topic among US sociologists was much slower to develop and i~ is still not a focal concern of many American sociologists. In fact, efforts have been underway for many years to form a Section in the American Sociological Association devoted to the study of consumption, but as yet th.ose efforts have not succeeded. The irony of this is that the US is seen as the quintessential consumer society and has been a major exporter of its products, brands, and consumption sites (e.g., McDonald's, Wal-Mart) to the rest of the world. It may be that consumption is sucb a central part of American life that it seems unproblematic, not only to most Americans, but also to the majority of American sociologists. It also may be that the recipients of American consumption exports in other parts of the world are more troubled by them so that sociologists there are drawn more to the topic. American sociologists (and others) also continue to be locked into the productivist bias that dominated the discipline in its early years and, therefore, have been slow to recognize the importance of consumption.

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