Original scientific paper

Sociocultural Aspects of Consumption, Consumer Culture and Society

Snježana ČOLIĆ ; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb

Abstract

The author analyses in the paper the sociocultural aspects of
consumption, consumer culture and society. With regard to
the fact that values in the field of consumption are pouring
over into other areas of social activity, it can be concluded
that modern society in totum is a consumer culture, and not
only in its specific consumption activities. One of the main
hypotheses of the paper is that the problem of interpreting
the consumer revolution, and thus the emergence of
contemporary consumer culture and society, is connected to
the key question in sociology – the question of the fate of the
Protestant ethic. What remains after abandoning the
Protestant ethic is only hedonism, which has become the
cultural excuse for capitalism. Consumer culture is related to
modernity as a whole as well as the main values, practices and institutions that define Western modernity such as
choice, individualism and first and foremost market relations.
The market is the main determinant of consumer culture. On
the other hand, consumption is manifested as the privileged
place of the autonomy of meaning, subjectivity, privacy and
freedom. For critics of consumer culture it can be observed
not as an individual liberation but an anomy, not as social
progress but pathology. Further analysed are some
contemporary approaches to consumption, consumer culture
and society, whereby the fact emphasised is that the world of
commodities and its principles of structuration are crucial in
understanding contemporary society.

Keywords

consumption; consumer culture; consumer society; free market; modernity; Protestant ethic

Hrčak ID:

31006

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/31006

Publication date:

31.12.2008.

Article data in other languages: croatian german

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