This site is a resource for scholars and others interested in the study of consumer culture and related topics such as leisure and critical investigations of everyday life. Consumer culture is a multidisciplinary field which focuses on a wide range of issues and themes. These converge on the idea that, in all human societies, consumption has an essentially cultural structure, and is central to the cultural -- as well as material -- reproduction of social lives and relationships. Consumer culture generally refers to the way in which consumption is organised and carried out within modern capitalist societies over the modern period, gathering social weight and importance from the eighteenth century onwards, with periods of huge transformation in the twentieth century. In a consumer culture consumption by and large takes the form of consuming commodities, goods obtained through market exchange rather than produced for direct use.The fact that modern consumption takes this form has enormous implications, and this is our field of study: for example, we look at the ways in which the meanings of goods are produced, mediated, circulated, interpreted within production, marketing and consumption; we look at the patterns of inequality and inequity in access to material and symbolic goods; we look at the ways in which structures and institutions of everyday life (such as the family, leisure, shopping, urban environments) have been structured in relation to modern consumption; we look at how crucial values and issues of modern life have been defined in relation to consumption (eg, choice, freedom, rationality, pleasure, fashion). This web-site is a 'research node': a collection of resources and communications links for scholars working in these very dynamic fields in many different disciplines and institutions. Bibliography For now, I've posted a list of 1,200 book and journal references covering the broadest senses of consumer culture and leisure studies, plus a large amount of economic sociology. Please send any references you feel should be added to this list. Course outlines I am trying to build up an archive of course syllabi for teaching this field. Any contributions are welcome. Researchers and Contacts - A listing of people active in the field. Please do add yourself by filling out the form. Resources and Links -- Sources of information both on and off the net: archives, web-sites, libraries, etc. If you are visiting this page for the first time, could you please leave a calling card: just a note to say you were here and, if you wish, some comments/suggestions.. Consumer Culture and Modernity: Polity Press published my book, Consumer Culture and Modernity in December. The book provides a survey of theories of consumer culture for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and colleagues new to this field of study. It is also intended to show that the issues involved in consumer culture (such as choice, rationality, freedom, desire, culture) have been integral to the development of modern social thought. You can see the table of contents and introduction to Consumer culture and Modernity here. You can order inspection copies by emailing to inspcopy@blackwellpublishers.co.uk. Please indicate your course title and number of students (must be more than 12) when asking for inspection copies. Consumer-studies mailbase This mailing list is centred around the University of East London and arose largely out of the conference on advertising and consumption held there in September 1994. You can subscribe by sending mailing to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk containing the message 'subscribe consumer-studies your name' (obviously replace the 'your name' with your name). NB: the book of that 1994 conference has been published by Routledge: Nava, M., A. Blake, I. MacRury, B. Richards (eds.) (1996) Buy This Book: Contemporary Issues in Advertising and Consumption. London: Routledge. ConsumAsiaN ConsumAsiaN is a research network on consumption and consumer culture in the Asian region which aims to gather together interested scholars, mainly from the social sciences, to work together both informally and through more formal workshops and conferences. There is also the beginnings of a Sociology of Consumption Research Network, associated with the European Sociological Association and growing out of their August conference: the contacts are Kaj Ilmonen and Alan Warde. This site is maintained by Don Slater, soa01ds@gold.ac.uk. I am physically located at: Department of Sociology Goldsmiths College University of London Lewisham Way New Cross London SE14 6NW Tel: 0171-919-7715 This page was last modified 23 October 1996. It was first published on 1 December 1995.
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