Consuming: Historical and Conceptual Issues
1 CONSUMING: HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ISSUES The twentieth century has been termed ‘The American Century’ (Luce, 1941; Evans, 1998). This designation seems especially appropriate in respect of contemporary consumer culture and associated consumer lifestyles, for as the twentieth century developed the global reach and influence of American consumerism increased markedly. With the growth of American economic and cultural influence, particularly in the latter half of the century, American consumer brands, culture, and lifestyles increasingly were being exported to and adopted by the rest of the world, albeit inflected in various ways by local customs and practices (Ritzer, 2005; Brewer and Trentman, 2006). American corporations, consumer goods, cultural forms, and styles exerted an increasing influ- ence over people’s lives and corporate brands, commodities, and services associated with the likes of Ford, Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonalds, Nike, MTV, Microsoft, Starbucks, and numerous other commercial enter- prises became cultural universals, immediately recognizable features of the consumer landscapes of a growing number of people around the world. If consumerism had its initial roots in Europe in the seventeenth century, as the fruits of conquest and colonization gave rise to increasing material wealth and a growth in the range of products available for consumption (McKendrick et al., 1983; Brewer and Porter, 1993), the ‘imitation’ that quickly took hold in the American colonies, and then in an independent USA, became from the late nineteenth century the ‘real thing’, a way of life to which, in due course, more and more people around the world have aspired, albeit while also at times attaching local 2 CONSUMER SOCIETY meanings and values to the commodities and services purchased and consumed (Glickman, 1999; Beck et al., 2003; Breen, 2004; Brewer and Trentmann, 2006).
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