Consumption and Consumer Society The Craft Consumer and Other Essays

This collection of high quality, largely previously published essays, analyses a range of controversies in the field of the sociology of culture and consumption. Campbell made a major contribution to the development of this field and he has a clear and coherent theoretical position which he employs to comment on interesting disputes among scholars seeking to understand consumer culture.

Introduction.- The desire for the new: its nature and social location as presented in theories of fashion and modern consumerism.- Consuming Goods and the Good of Consuming.- Conspicuous Confusion? A Critique of Veblen’s Theory of Conspicuous Consumption.- The Meaning of objects and the meaning of actions: a critical note on the sociology of consumption and theories of clothing.- Shopping, Pleasure and the Sex War.- Consumption and the Rhetorics of Need and Want.- I Shop therefore I Know that I Am: The Metaphysical Basis of Modern consumerism.- The Craft Consumer: Culture, craft and consumption in a postmodern society.- The curse of the new: how the accelerating pursuit of the new is driving hyper-consumption.- A Matter of Necessity: Reflections on Need and Want in a Time of Lockdown.