The post-Fordist accumulation regime has drifted toward hedonistic consumerism: a mix of highly unequal and bourgeoning consumption. Since World War II, cultural and structural elements have led to a situation in which consumption, fostered by induced wants, far exceeds levels of basic need and tends to be monopolized by the wealthiest, both among and within nations. I suggest that a possible solution to these tensions may be found by applying Sen's notion of equality of opportunity to modern patterns of consumption.
Adorno, T.
, and
M. Horkheimer.1972. Dialectic of enlightenment.
New York: Herder and Herder
.
2.
Alkire, S.2002. Valuing freedoms. Sen's capability approach and poverty reduction.
Oxford: Oxford University Press
.
3.
Alwitt, L.F.
, and
T.D. Donley.1996. The low-income consumer. Adjusting the balance of exchange.
Thousand Oaks: Sage
.
4.
Appadurai, A.1986. The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
5.
———. 2001.
Deep democracy: Urban governability and the horizon of politics
. Environment and Urbanization13 (2):
23—44
.
6.
Barnett, C.2000.
E-legacy: The IP systems challenge
. Journal of General Management25 (4):
1—16
.
7.
Baudrillard, J.1994. Simulacra and simulation.
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press
.
8.
———. 1998. The consumer society: Myths and structures.
London: Sage
.
9.
Bauman, Z.2001.
Consuming life
. Journal of Consumer Culture1 (1):
9—29
.
10.
Beabout, G.R.
, and
E.J. Echeverria .2002.
The culture of consumerism: A catholic and personalist critique
. Journal of Markets & Morality5 (2):
339—383
.
11.
Beck, U.1999. World risk society.
Cambridge: Polity Press
.
12.
Binkley, S.2004.
Everybody's life is like a spiral: Narrating post-Fordism in the lifestyle movement of the 1970s. Cultural Studies
— Critical Methodologies4 (1):
71—96
.
13.
Boltanski, L.
, and
E. Chiapello.1999. Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme.
Paris: Gallimard
.
14.
Bonvin, J.-M.
, and
N. Farvaque.2004.
Social opportunities and individual responsibility: The capability approach and the third way. Éthique et Économique/Ethics andEconomics2 (2).
15.
Bowlby, R.1985. Just looking: Consumer culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola.
Andover: Methuen
.
16.
Boyer, R.2000.
The political in the era of globalization and finance: Focus on some regulation school research
. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research24 (2):
274—322
.
17.
Boyer, R.2001. The regulation approach as a theory of capitalism: A new derivation. In Institutional economics in France and Germany: German ordoliberalism versus the French regulation school, ed.
A. Labrousse
and
J.-D. Weisz
, 49—92.
Berlin: Springer Verlag
.
18.
———. 2003. Les institutions dans la théorie de la régulation.
Paris: CEPREMAP
.
19.
Boyer, R.
, and
Y. Saillard
, eds. 2002. Régulation theory: The state of the art.
London: Routledge
.
20.
Boyer, R.
, and
A. Orléan.1991.
Les transformations des conventions salariales entre théorie et histoire: D'Henry Ford au Fordisme
. Revue Économique42 (2):
233—272
.
21.
Breazele, K.1994.
In spite of women: Esquire Magazine and the construction of the male consumer
. Signs20 (1):
1—22
.
Burgess, A.2001.
Flattering consumption: Creating a Europe of the consumer
. Journal of Consumer Culture1 (1):
93—117
.
24.
Burke, T.1996. Lifebuoy men, lux women: Commodification, consumption, and cleanliness in modern Zimbabwe.
Durham: Duke University Press
.
25.
Campbell, C.1987. The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern capitalism .
New York: Blackwell
.
26.
———. 1991.
Consumption: The new wave of research in the humanities and social sciences
. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality6 (6):
57—58
.
27.
———. 1994.
Consuming goods and the good of consuming
. Critical Review8 (4):
503—520
.
28.
Cantwell, J.
, and
G.D. Santangelo .2000.
Capitalism, profits and innovation in the new techno-economic paradigm
. Journal of Evolutionary Economics10:
131—157
.
29.
Census, U.S. Bureau of the.1998. Current population reports, P60-203, Measuring 50 years of economic change using the March Current Population Survey.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office
.
30.
Clark, T. N.
, and
S. M. Lipset
, eds. 2004. The breakdown of class politics: A debate on post-industrial stratification.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
.
31.
Cohen, L.1998. The new deal state and the making of citizen consumers . In
Getting
and
spending
, ed. S. Strasser, C. McGovern, and M. Judt, 111—125.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
32.
Cotton, P.1990.
Tobacco foes attack ads that target women, minorities, teens and the poor
. The Journal of the American Medical Association264 (2):
1505—1506
.
33.
Crocker, D. A.
, and
T. Linden
, eds. 1998. Ethics of consumption: The good life, justice, and global stewardship.
Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield
.
34.
Daly, H.E.1997. Beyond growth: The economics of sustainable development .
Boston: Beacon Press
.
35.
Debord, G.1994[1967]. The society of the spectacle.
New York: Zone Books
.
36.
Deleuze, G.
, and
F. Guattari.1988. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia.
London: Athlone Press
.
37.
DeNavas-Walt, C.
,
R. Cleveland
,
B.H. Webster
, Jr., and
U.S. Census Bureau.2003 . Current population reports, P60-221, Income in the United States: 2002.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office
.
38.
Devereux, S.2001.
Sen's entitlement approach: Critiques and counter-critiques
. Oxford Development Studies29 (3):
245—263
.
39.
Douglas, M.
, and
B. Isherwood.1979. The world of goods: Towards an anthropology of consumption.
New York: Basic Books
.
40.
Doyal, L.
, and
I. Gough.1991. A theory of human need.
London: Macmillan
.
41.
Elliott, J.E.2000.
Adam Smith's conceptualization of power, markets, and politics
. Review of Social Economy58 (4):
429—454
.
42.
Featherstone, M.1991. Consumer culture and postmodernism.
London: Sage
.
43.
Ferguson, R.W.
, Jr. 2004. Remarks by Vice Chairman Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. to the National Bankers Association, October 6, 2004, at Nashville, Tennessee.
44.
Fine, B.1995. From political economy to consumption. In Acknowledging consumption, ed.
D. Miller
, 127—163.
New York: Routledge
.
45.
Fine, B.
, and
E. Leopold.1990.
Consumerism and the industrial revolution
. Social History15:
151—179
.
46.
Fischer, C.S.2003.
Succumbing to consumerism?: Underlying models in the historical claim. Paper read at the American Sociological Association Meetings
, Atlanta, August.
47.
Fligstein, N.2001. The architecture of markets: An economic sociology of twenty-first century capitalist societies.
Princeton: Princeton University Press
.
48.
Frank, R.1985. Choosing the right pond.
New York: Oxford University Press
.
49.
Friedman, T.2005. The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
.
50.
Gabriel, Y.
, and
T. Lang.1995. The unmanageable consumer: Contemporary consumption and its fragmentation.
London: Sage
.
51.
Galbraith, J.K.1958. The affluent society.
Cambridge: The Riverside Press
.
52.
Ger, G.1997.
Human development and humane consumption
. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing16 (1):
110—125
.
53.
Godelier, M.1999. The enigma of the gift.
London: Blackwell
.
54.
Goulding, C.2003.
Issues in representing the postmodern consumer. Qualitative Market Research: AnInternational Journal6 (3):
152—59
.
55.
Guillet de Monthoux, P.
, and
A. Strati.2002.
Modernity/art and marketing/aesthetics—A note on the social aesthetics of Georg Simmel
. Consumption, Markets and Culture5 (1):
1—11
.
56.
Hansen, U.
, and
U. Schrader.1997.
A modern model of consumption for a sustainable society
. Journal of Consumer Policy20:
443—468
.
57.
Held, D.
, and
A. McGrew.2002. Introduction. In Governing globalization: Power, authority and global governance, ed.
A. McGrew
, 1—21.
Cambridge: Polity Press
.
58.
Hill, M.2003.
Development as empowerment
. Feminist Economics9 (2/3):
117—135
.
59.
Hirschman, E.C.
, and
M.B. Holbrook.1992. Postmodern consumer research. The study of consumption as textLondon: Sage
.
60.
hooks, b.2000. Where we stand: Class matters.
New York: Routledge
.
61.
Jackson, W.A.2005.
Capabilities, culture and social structure
. Review of Social Economy63 (1):
101—124
.
62.
Jameson, F.1990. Reification and utopia in mass culture. Signatures of the visible.
London: Routledge
.
63.
Jameson, F.1996. Postmodernism and consumer society. In
Advertising
and
consumer culture
, ed. J.
Baker
, 91—98.
Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press Inc
.
64.
Jessop, B.1999. Reflections on globalization and its (il)logics. In Globalization and the Asia Pacific: Contested territories, ed.
P. Dicken
,
P. Kelley
,
K. Olds
, and
H. Yeung
, 19—38.
London: Routledge
.
65.
Jessop, B.2000.
The crisis of the national spatio-temporal fix and the ecological dominance of globalizing capitalism
. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research24 (2):
323—360
.
66.
———. 2002a. The future of the capitalist state.
Cambridge: Polity
.
67.
———. 2002b.
Time and space in the globalization of capital and their implications for state power
. Rethinking Marxism14 (1):
97—117
.
68.
Jordan, B.1996. A theory of poverty and social exclusion.
Cambridge: Polity Press
.
69.
Kant, I.1993. Grounding for the metaphysics of morals. Trans. J. W. Ellington.
Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Lévi-Strauss, C.1987. Introduction to the works of Marcel Mauss.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
.
72.
Li, X.2001.
The market democracy conundrum
. Journal of Political Ideology6 (1):
75—94
.
73.
Lipietz, A.1991. Les rapports capital-travail a l'aube du XXIe siècle. In Les limites de l'inéluctable, ed.
J. M. Chaumont
and
P. Van Parijs.Bruxelles: De Boeck-Wesmael
,
74.
Lu, P.2001.
New people, a special lifestyle
. Bejing Review31 (May):
13—17
.
75.
Mackay, H.
, ed. 1997. Consumption and everyday life.
London: Sage
.
76.
Maddison, A.2003. The world economy: Historical statistics.
Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
.
77.
Marcuse, H.1964. One dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society.
Boston: Beacon Press
.
78.
Maslow, A.H.1987. Motivation and personality. 3rd ed.
New York: Longman
.
79.
Mauss, M.1969. The gift forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies .
London: Cohen and West
.
80.
Mazur, L. A.
, ed. 1994. Beyond the numbers: A reader on population, consumption and the environment.
Washington: Island Press
.
81.
McKibben, B.1999. Consuming nature. In Consuming desires , ed.
R. Rosenblatt.Washington: Island Press
,
82.
McLuhan, H.M.1951. The mechanical bride: Folklore of industrial mind.
New York: Vanguard Press
.
83.
Meiksins-Wood, E.1998. The retreat from class. A new `true' socialism. Rev. ed.
London: Verso
.
84.
Milanovic, B.2002. Correspondence on income, inequality and poverty during the transition from planned to market economy.
Washington, DC: World Bank
.
85.
Morgan, J.M.2003.
Citizenship, consumerism, and the pursuit of excellence
. Technology in Society25:
55—64
.
Nussbaum, M.2000. Women and human development: The capabilities approach .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
88.
Nussbaum, M.2004.
Beyond the social contract: Capabilities and global justice
. Oxford Development Studies32 (1):
3—18
.
89.
Oecd.2002. Towards sustainable household consumption? Trends and policies in OECD countries.
Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
.
90.
Oecd.2004. Economic outlook no. 75.
Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
.
91.
O'Hara, P.A.2002.
A new financial social structure of accumulation in the United States for long wave upswing?Review of Radical Political Economics34:
295—301
.
92.
———. 2003.
Deep recession and financial instability or a new long wave of economic growth for U.S. capitalism? A regulation school approach
. Review of Radical Political Economics35 (1):
18—43
.
93.
Ohmann, R.
, ed. 1996. Making and selling culture.
Hanover: Wesleyan University Press
.
94.
Osberg, L.
, and
A. Sharpe.2002.
An index of economic well-being for selected OECD countries
. Review of Income and Wealth48 (3):
291—316
.
95.
Papadakis, M.2000. Technology in the globalization of the USA. In Globalizing America: The USA in world integration, ed.
T. L. Brewer
and
G. Boyd
, 134—153.
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
.
96.
Passero.1996.
Spending patterns of families receiving public assistance
. Monthly Labor Review (April):
21—28
.
97.
Phillips, R.J.2000.
Digital technology and institutional change from the gilded age to modern times: The impact of the telegraph and the internet
. Journal of Economic Issues34 (2):
267—289
.
Rosenbaum, E.F.1999.
Against naive materialism: Culture, consumption and the causes of inequality
. Cambridge Journal of Economics23:
317—336
.
110.
Salais, R.1991.
Flexibilite et conventions du travail: Une approche
. Economie Appliquee44 (2):
5—32
.
111.
Sassatelli, R.2000.
From value to consumption: A social-theoretical perspective on Simmel's Philosophie des geldes
. Acta Sociologica43:
207—218
.
112.
Schor, J.1996.
What's wrong with consumer capitalism? The joyless economy after twenty years
. Critical Review10 (4):
495—508
.
113.
———. 1998. Beyond consumerism.
New York: Basic Books
.
114.
Scitovsky, T.1976. The joyless economy: An inquiry into human satisfaction and consumer dissatisfaction.
New York: Oxford University Press
.
115.
Sen, A.K.1972. Rational fools: A critique of the behavioral foundations of economic theory. In
Choice, welfare
and
measurement
, ed. A. Sen.
Cambridge: MIT Press
.
116.
———. 1980. Equality of what? In Tanner lectures on human values, ed.
S. M. McMurrin
, 195-220.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press
.
117.
———. 1985. Rights and capabilities. In
Morality
and
objectivity
, ed. T. Honderich, 130-148.
London: Routledge
.
118.
———. 1990. Development as capability expansion. In Human development and the international development strategy for the 1990s , ed.
K. Griffin
and
J. Knight
, 41—58.
London: MacMillan
.
119.
———. 1992. Inequality reexamined.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press
.
120.
———. 1993. Capability and well-being. In The quality of life, ed.
M. Nussbaum
and
A. Sen
, 30—53.
Oxford: Clarendon Press
.
121.
———. 1996.
Rationality, joy and freedom
. Critical Review10 (4):
481—494
.
122.
———. 1999. Development as freedom.
Oxford: Oxford University Press
.
123.
———. 2002.
Globalization, inequality and global protest
. Development and Change45:
11—16
.
124.
Shipman, A.2001.
Privatized production, socialized consumption? Old producer power behind the new consumer sovereignty
. Review of Social Economy59 (3):
331—352
.
125.
Simmel, G.1900. Philosophie des geldes.
Leipzig: Duncker
and Humbolt.
126.
———. 1903.
Über räumliche projektionen sozialer formen
. Zeitschrift für sozialwissenschaften6:
287—302
.
127.
——— 1971[1904]. Fashion. In
Georg Simmel
, ed. D. Levine, 294—323.
Chicago : University of Chicago Press
.
128.
Sirolli, E.1999. Ripples from the Zambesi: Passion, entrepreneurship and the rebirth of local economies.
Philadelphia: New Society Publishers
.
129.
Sklair, L.2002. Globalization: Capitalism and its alternatives.
Oxford: Oxford University Press
.
Spangenberg, J.H.
, and
S. Lorek.2002.
Environmentally sustainable household consumption: From aggregate environmental pressures to priority fields of action. EcologicalEconomics43:
127—140
.
132.
Staab, A.1997.
Testing the West: Consumerism and national identity in Eastern Germany. GermanPolitics6 (2):
139—149
.
133.
Tabb, W.K.2001.
New economy ... same irrational economy
. Monthly Review52 (11):
1—9
.
Thein Durning, A.1992. How much is enough: The consumer society and the future of the Earth.
New York: W. W. Norton
.
136.
Thompson, E.P.1978.
Eighteenth-century English society: Class struggle without class?Social History3.
137.
Undp.1998. Human development report 1998: Consumption for human development.
New York : United Nations Development Programme
.
138.
———. 2003. Human development report 2003: Millennium development goals: A compact among nations to end human poverty.
New York: United Nations Development Programme
.
139.
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.2006. Consumer Expenditure Survey. Series CXUPA000103.
140.
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.2006. Consumer Expenditure Survey. Series CXUUE000103.
141.
Vaneigem, R.1984[1967]. The revolution of everyday life.
London: Rebel Press
.
142.
Weber, M.1922. Wirstschaft und gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden soziologie.
Tübingen: Mohr
. ———. 1981. General economic history.
New Brunswick : Transaction Books
.
143.
Wells, A.1972.
Picture-tube imperialism? The impact of U.S. television on Latin America. Marknoll
: Orbis.
144.
White, H.1981.
Where do markets come from?American Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare87 (3):
517—547
.
145.
Wilk, R.R.1996. Economies and cultures: Foundations of economic anthropology .
Boulder: Westview Press
.
146.
Witt, U.2001.
Learning to consume—A theory of wants and the growth of demand
. Journal of Evolutionary Economics11 (1):
23—36
.
147.
Yates, N.2001. Globalisation and social policy.
Sage : London
.
148.
ZenithOptimedia Group Limited.2004. Press release: ZenithOptimedia upgrades global ad forecasts again.
London
.
149.
Zhao, B.1996.
Consumerism, Confucianism, communism: Making sense of China today
. New Left Review222 (March-Apr.):
43—59
.
