Putting the anthropos back in consumer research: Beyond reductionisms

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to open for a missing dialogue between consumer culture theorization and biological anthropology and biology. In this sense, it is a kind of “manifesto” for a future interdisciplinary research program. The point of departure is for consumer researchers to get beyond and avoid the lure of much of the standard evolutionary Neo-Darwinist theorizing with its focus on a sharp division between innate and acquired features and adaptationism as the driving logic. Instead, consumer culture theory can – and should – find inspiration in open systems approaches to human biology and culture, in biosemiotics, and in current movements toward a post-anthropocentric anthropology that reinserts the human as a “becoming” element in a dynamic natural unfolding. Finally, it is argued that such a renewed dialogue is pivotal in the establishment of an ecological wisdom for addressing contemporary issues of climate change and sustainability.