Table Of Content

THE WORLD OF CONSUMPTION Consumption has become one of the leading topics across the social sciences and vocational disciplines such as marketing and business studies. As a result of this, a number of overlapping analytical problems have arisen: how to integrate contributions from the different disciplines; how to address the relationship between society and the individual in a postmodernist world; and how to bring material and cultural factors together. This book provides an answer. In this comprehensively updated and revised new edition, traditional approaches as well as the most recent literature are fully addressed and incorporated, with wide reference to theoretical and empirical work. Fine’s refreshing and authori- tative text includes a critical examination of such themes as: (cid:127) economics imperialism and globalisation; (cid:127) the world of commodities; (cid:127) systems of provision and culture; (cid:127) the consumer society; (cid:127) public consumption. This book presents an updated analysis of the cluttered landscape of studies of consumption that will make it required reading for students from a wide range of backgrounds including political economy, history and social science courses generally. Ben Fine is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Economic Policy for Southern Africa, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of several books for Routledge, including Social Capital versus Social Theory(2000). ECONOMICS AS SOCIAL THEORY Series edited by Tony Lawson University of Cambridge Social theory is experiencing something of a revival within economics. Critical analyses of the particular nature of the subject matter of social studies and of the types of method, categories and modes of explanation that can legitimately be endorsed for the scientific study of social objects are re-emerging. Economists are again addressing such issues as the relationship between agency and structure, between economy and the rest of society, and between the enquirer and the object of enquiry. There is a renewed interest in elaborating basic categories such as causation, competition, culture, discrimination, evolution, money, need, order, organisation, power probability, process, rationality, technology, time, truth, uncertainty, value, etc. The objective for this series is to facilitate this revival further. In contempo- rary economics the label ‘theory’ has been appropriated by a group that confines itself to largely asocial, ahistorical, mathematical ‘modelling’. Economics as Social Theory thus reclaims the ‘theory’ label, offering a platform for alternative rigorous, but broader and more critical, conceptions of theorising. Other titles in this series include: ECONOMICS AND LANGUAGE Edited by Willie Henderson RATIONALITY, INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMIC METHODOLOGY Edited by Uskali Mäki, Bo Gustafsson and Christian Knudsen NEW DIRECTIONS IN ECONOMIC METHODOLOGY Edited by Roger Backhouse WHO PAYS FOR THE KIDS? Nancy Folbre RULES AND CHOICE IN ECONOMICS Viktor Vanberg BEYOND RHETORIC AND REALISM IN ECONOMICS Thomas A. Boylan and Paschal F. O’Gorman FEMINISM, OBJECTIVITY AND ECONOMICS Julie A. Nelson ECONOMIC EVOLUTION Jack J. Vromen ECONOMICS AND REALITY Tony Lawson THE MARKET John O’ Neill ECONOMICS AND UTOPIA Geoff Hodgson CRITICAL REALISM IN ECONOMICS Edited by Steve Fleetwood THE NEW ECONOMIC CRITICISM Edited by Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osteeen WHAT DO ECONOMISTS KNOW? Edited by Robert F. Garnett, Jr POSTMODERNISM, ECONOMICS AND KNOWLEDGE Edited by Stephen Cullenberg, Jack Amariglio and David F. Ruccio THE VALUES OF ECONOMICS An Aristotelian perspective Irene van Staveren HOW ECONOMICS FORGOT HISTORY The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science Geoffrey M. Hodgson INTERSUBJECTIVITY IN ECONOMICS Agents and Structures Edward Fullbrook THE WORLD OF CONSUMPTION, SECOND EDITION The Material and Cultural Revisited Ben Fine THE WORLD OF CONSUMPTION The material and cultural revisited Second edition Ben Fine London and New York First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 2002 Ben Fine All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fine, Ben. The world of consumption : the material and cultural revisited / Ben Fine – 2nd ed. (Economics as social theory) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Consumption (Economics) I. Title II Series. HB801 .F52 2002 339.4'7–dc21 2001048675 ISBN 0–415–27944–5 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–27945–3 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-42295-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-73119-0 (Adobe eReader Format) CONTENTS Preface ix 1 Introduction and overview 1 2 From economics imperialism to globalisation? 9 3 The world of commodities 26 4 Use value and consumption 57 5 Consumption through systems of provision 79 6 Systems of provision and cultural systems 101 7 Economics and consumption 125 8 What is consumer society? 155 9 Whatever happened to public consumption? 176 10 Welfarism in light of globalisation 187 11 Whither consumption studies? 211 Notes 229 References 258 Name Index 299 Subject Index 307 vii PREFACE A decade has passed since the first edition of World of Consumptionwas drafted. In the interim, the contours and context of the study of consumption have changed enormously, if not out of all recognition. This new edition offers the opportunity to take stock. In doing so, the volume has been so much revised that it is essen- tially a new publication altogether. The structure, the sequencing and the vast majority of the content of the original have been set aside. Newly written material has replaced the old, and the scattered chunks of the old that remain have been heavily rewritten, amended or reorganised. The vast majority of references in this new edition did not appear in the old one! Yet, despite these drastic measures, the core approach and arguments of the original stand as before. Indeed, they have been strengthened not only through the new text but also through the impression that the system of provision approach that the original pioneered is growing in popularity and influence, although evidence occasionally takes the form of criticism, some extremely harsh, as well as praise. So why and how is the content of the new edition being changed, far above major updating? It is necessary to explain the nature of, and reasons for, the revisions. At the time of the first edition, the burgeoning literature on consumption had begun to depart from its infancy but it still remains short of adulthood and maturity. As explained then, and again in Chapters 5 and 6 of this edition, much of the understanding of consumption has been organised ‘horizontally’, addressing theories and factors within social science disciplines and across a range, possibly not delimited, of consumption goods or aspects of consumer behaviour. The original edition established this in Chapters 3 to 5 (and elsewhere in the text), covering consumer studies, economics and psychology, respectively. With the exception of economics, now sited in Chapter 7, these chapters have now simply been omitted. The opening chapter of these three on different disciplines was unusual since it addressed consumer studies, a discipline that has primarily been developed and practised in the United States. Nonetheless, it had a wider relevance. Analytically, it has been based on an amalgam of marketing, psychology, business, marketing and any other disciplinary fragments that proved convenient in ix