The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures"The young Baudrillard at his best... a sociological study of the society of consumption of the finest order, this text continues to shed light on the subject and object of consumption, around which contemporary societies are organized." - Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles Jean Baudrillard's classic text was one of the first to focus on the process and meaning of consumption in contemporary culture. Originally published in 1970, the book makes a vital contribution to current debates on consumption. The book includes Baudrillard's most organized discussion of mass media culture, the meaning of leisure, and anomie in affluent society. A chapter on the body demonstrates Baudrillard's extraordinary prescience for flagging vital subjects in contemporary culture long before others. This English translation begins with an introductory essay by George Ritzer. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Formal Liturgy of the Object | 25 |
2 The Miraculous Status of Consumption | 31 |
3 The Vicious Circle of Growth | 37 |
The Theory of Consumption | 49 |
5 Towards a Theory of Consumption | 69 |
6 Personalization or the Smallest Marginal Difference | 87 |
Mass Media Sex and Leisure | 99 |
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Common terms and phrases
advertising affluence affluent society alienated ambience analysis Baudrillard beauty become body Boorstin Brigitte Bardot collective combinatorial commodity communication competition con constraint consumer society consumption contradiction culture defined demand differentiation dimension discourse distinctive drugstore economic enjoyment everywhere exchange-value expenditure fact fashion function gadget Galbraith happiness human ideology imperative individual industrial inequality integration Jean Baudrillard kitsch labour power leisure liberated longer ludic magical manipulation Marxian mass mass media material means merely mode modern morality myth nature needs objectivized objects one's oneself order of production person perspective play pop art postmodern potlatch precisely prestige primitive society principle problem productive forces productivist pseudo-event rational relations repression satisfaction sense sexual signified signs simulation social logic sociological solicitude speaking status structural Student of Prague symbolic exchange systematic takes technical technostructure theory things tion unconscious use-value violence whole