Abstract
The notion of “consumer society” emerged after World War II and was made famous by authors such as Arendt, Marcuse, Galbraith, Packard, and Baudrillard. It was used to suggest that the society in which we live is a late variant of capitalism characterized by the primacy of consumption over production. In contemporary societies, because of the separation of production and consumption, we find ourselves confronted with objects whose meaning is beyond our everyday life and yet we are mobilized as “consumers” to use these objects in meaningful ways. Furthermore, consumer acts and emotional life have become closely linked. Identity and consumption are strictly entwined, consumer practices involving social actors as both rational and emotional beings.
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