The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)

By Jean Baudrillard

Book Overview

This is the first English-language translation of Jean Baudrillard s contemporary classic on the sociology of consumption. Originally published in 1970, the book was one of the first to focus on the processes and meaning of consumption in contemporary culture. At a time when others were fixated with the production process, Baudrillard could be found making the case that consumption is now the axis of culture. He demonstrates how consumption is related to the goal of economic growth and he maps out a social theory of consumption. Many of the themes that would later make Baudrillard famous are sketched out here for the first time. In particular, his concepts of simulation and the simulacrum receive their earliest systematic treatment. Written at a time when Baudrillard was moving away from both Marxism and institutional sociology, the book is more systematic than his later works. He is still pursuing the task of locating consumption in culture and society. So the reader will find here his most organized discussion of mass media culture, the meaning of leisure, and anomie in affluent society. There is also a fascinating chapter on the body that shows yet again Baudrillard′s extraordinary prescience in flagging the importance of vital subjects in contemporary culture long before his colleagues. Baudrillard is widely acclaimed as a key thinker in sociology, communication, and cultural studies. This book makes available to English-speaking readers one of his most important works. It will be devoured by the steadily expanding circle of Baudrillard scholars, and it will also be required reading for students of the sociology of culture, communication, and cultural studies.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761956921
• ISBN13: 9780761956921
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Limited
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

A Great Introduction to a General Theory of Consumption

Of Baudrillard's many books, The Consumer Society is a ground breaking work and a clear advance from Liberal and Marxist interpretation of the capitalist economy. Baudrillard deploys structural analysis to decode what he later develops into theories of simulation, hyperealty, among others. In the consumer society his approach is still grounded in structuralist and Marxian approaches. Despite its academic approach, this is one of Baudrillard's most accessible works and, truthfully, a better place to start that his later work - Simulacra and Simulations - popularized by the Matrix. His work really extends arguments made by Veblen, Galbraith and Vance Packard, with regard to consumption operating as a system of communicating social status. However, he develops these themes more systematically, borrowing from Barthian semiology to begin his development of a enlarged theory of consumption as a communication system with the power of reordering society toward a system based no longer on needs but desires. The result is a more thorough analysis and broader critique: it is a cornerstone work in the development modern consumer theory and the beginning of a psychology of consumption. For Baudrillard, this is the start point to a fatalistic system whose telos is not some Hegel cum McLuhan universal spirit but one of catastrophe and implosion. A world where realty has been exchanged for an image or sign that increasing has no reference to the real. Since consumer has been reordered from a firm basis of need to a slippery one based on desire, the consumer society is insatiable and superficial creating an unstoppable advance that Baudrillard believes can only end in catastrophe. Baudrillard is a prolific writer and perhaps the most important social thinker of the past 20 or 30 years. I recommend this book as one of his most relevant and accessible texts.