woodward_12_consumption as culture.pdf

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CHAPTER 25...............................................................................................

CONSUMPTION ASCULTURAL INTERPRETATION:TASTE, PERFORMATIVITY,AND NAVIGATING THEFOREST OF OBJECTS

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IAN WOODWARD

THROUGH its varied theoretical and empirical contributions, cultural sociologyshowsthat myth and narrativeare elemental meaning-makingstructuresthat formthe bases of social life.Collectivelyexperiencedand personallyfelt,th ey allowsocialstructures to find an internal life, compelling and committing us to the diversethings we hold sacred. We interact with these meaning-structures in a variety ofways, but one of the most important is through the material and objectual formswith which weengage.We reside within a forest of objects (d . Turner 1967).Most of

.'these objects have not been directly made or produced by us, but through visual,corporeal, and imaginative engagements, we negotiate and construct their mean-ings,using themto make ourselves and, in turn,a larger universe of meaning. Richwith symbolism, demanding our attention, sparking our imaginations and bodies,rife with possibilities for pleasure, devotion, distinction, and play,we revel in andamong this material forest (Bollas 2009).Material objects constitutemuch of whatweasmembers ofa society knowand are alsothe means bywhichwecome to knowit.Materiality, the substance of consumersocieties that needs to be analytically andmorally disentangled from the trait of materialism, becomes a basic means forimmersing ourselveswithin this forest of meaning.

Ian Woodward, Consumption as Cultural

Interpretation: Taste, Performativity, and

Navigating the Forest of Objects, pp. 671-697 inAlexander, Jacobs, and Smith, eds., The

Oxford Handbook of Culture Sociology (2012)


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TOWARDS A CULTURAL ApPROACH TO CONSUMPTIONAND MATERIALITY: THE CENTRAL PROBLEMS

In this chapter, the current state and future of consumption studies is consideredthrough the lens of intersecting research vectors in the fieldsof consumption stud-ies,taste, and materiality. These lattertwo concepts arefundamental dimensions ofmost consumption practices. To have a "taste" for certain objects, experiences, and

673ONSUMPTION AS CULTURAL INTERPRETATION

such diverse areas of social change ascultural and economic inequality, urban andspatial development, identity and selfhood, gender relations and performativity,media and advertising, and eating and dining practices. So,in significantways,themoveto bring in consumption has been a recent revolution in the culturalsciencesand has led to the consideration of topics that were previously marginalized, andindeed not even conceived of,in mainstream sociological theory.

The profusion of consumptionstudies is evidenced by the fact that-after onlya little more than a decade of intensive research and focus within the social andcultural sciences-Miller (1995) declared consumption to be "the vanguard of his-tory."Hisproclamationcelebrated the profusionof groundbreaking,predominantlytheoretical work in that era, and the subsequent paradigmaticconsolidation of thefield in the decades of the 1980s and 1990S. Within the f ield of consumptionstudies-andalso to a significantdegreewithinthe discipline of objectstudies morewidely (seeKnorr-Cetina 1997; Latour 2007;Pels,Hetherington , andVandenberghe2002)-it seems apt to observe that materiality, objects, and "stuff" are the newfrontier, associologists position questions ofmateriality and object-based practicesof consumption at the forefront of their studies (Appadurai 1986; Miller 1987;Dant2005, 2008; Swedberg2005).

In reflecting on the consequence of these changes, we can identify that thedevelopment of the field of consumption studies has been significant within thelarger intellectual fieldof sociology in a couple of ways.First,it offered a correctionto the entrenched productionist, materialist, and institutionalist tendencies inher-ent withinmainstream sociological and cultural theory; and in this context can beconsidered more generally as part of the cultural turn in sociological theory. Inaddition, this new field has opened up fresh thinking on the lives and biographiesof commodities, person-object relationships, and meaning-making processeswithobjects and materials. Byemphasising the culturalbasesof economic and commer-cial activity, consumption theory defines the world of goods in cultural terms.Furthermore, it has increasingly pointed out tha t it is not just what we consumewhich is cultural, but whatis produced (du Gay and Pryke 2002;Jameson 1991). Inaddition to merely the consumption side of economic activity, forms of culturalexpertise and planning begin to shape the production process and influence theform and contentof economic activity,including consumption.

MATERIALITY AS CULTURE

Perhaps the most important contribution of consumption studies within thelast few decades has been to bring these objects into the center of any analysisofsociality. Social actors are not just immersed in a material world where objects aremere scaffoldsor props that have silently enlisted them-nor arethey oppressed oralienated by them-but they activelyseekout objectual engagements and put theseobjects to a variety of social uses. Through various scenarios of consumption-where people use goods or servicesnot just asa practice in theworld,but asa meansto understand and constructtheworld and their place in it-social lifeis inescapablyobject-oriented.Engagements with consumption objects bridge physical,pragmatic,psychic, and cultural imperatives, connecting us to a world of meaning througheveryday practices, such as shopping, eating, playing or watching sports, driving amotor vehicle,or listening to music.Put simply,consumption studies dealswith theprocesses,practices, and outcomes of people's useof, and engagementwith, objects.In focusing on processes of objectification-the way meaning ismaterially createdand communicated and the waysocial action ismateriallymediated-consumptionstudies hasallowedsociologiststo explore questions of reception and usein the com-modityworld and the materialworld broadly.Beyond this,as the classicalstatements.in economic anthropology have reminded us, the economic activities of exchangeand consumption actually constitute the circulation of cultural ideals (Douglas andIsherwood 1979;Mauss 1954; Sahlins 1974).What is valued, exchanged, and used arenot just "commodities",bu tmaterial containers of culturalmeaning. From a culturalpoint of view,what we call"the economy" is fundamentally a networked systemofsymbolic exchange,rather than a merelyfield of socialaction defined bymodels ofinstrumental rationality and commercial contract.

In the United States especially, sociologists have often ignored consumptionand have come to appreciate itssociologicalsignificancelater than their British andEuropean counterparts (Zukin and Maguire 2004). Much of modern lifeand thetype of sociology it required and encouraged was devoted to understanding theproblems of production within industrial societies. Questions of labor, industry,production units, social, legal and economic institutions, technology, and socialclasswere the core stuff of mainstream socialinquirythrough much of the twenti-eth century. In mainstream sociology,consumptionwas,for most of the discipline'shistory, simply not a relevant analytic category. Or, if it was contemplated, it was 'predominantly configured through discourses of triviality, excess,vulgarity or cul-tural superiority,and domination. For example, asmuch as sociologists arelikelytoprofess enjoying Veblen's(1899) caustic dissection of the leisure classof nineteenth-centuryAmerica, his work has in fact done much to segregate consumptionto thearena of individualism, emulation, and competitive display.Rather than assigningconsumption to limited realms of socialaction, in the last fewdecades, researchershave increasingly situatedpractices of consumptionand a consumeristethic ascen-tral for understanding broader socialand cultural change. There is ample theoreti-cal and empiricalwarrantfor this,as consumption isidentified asbeing increasinglycentral to diverse aspects of social life. This increased sensitivity to consumptionpatterns and processes has impacted on the way sociologists have conceptualized


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CONSUMPTION AS CULTURAL INTERPRETATION

structured form of social action. AsI will elaborate in this chapter, this pattern ofinheritance is particularly evident in sociological studies of taste, where

patterns of tastes are frequently studied as distributions of variables repre-sentmg preferences for cultural objects. Here, we can visualize the social distribu-tions of certain taste preferences and surmise the role they might play in socialreproduction, but we cannot get a sense of the cultural qualities, feelings, perfor-mances, and practices that inform,accomplish, or construct these tastes.Third, in developing a program for a cultural sociological approach to con-

sumption,I argue that sociologists wouldprofit by reconceptualizing consumptionas a universal practice of cultural interpretationwhere social actors seek ritualized,enchanting engagements with objects that originate across the economic and cul-tural spectrum and which are perceived to symbolize variegated ideals such asgoodness, beauty, authenticity, or truth. Toadopt this principle is not to denythatmuch consumption is about mundane utility or the transitioning of daily needs.But, evenhere in what wemightthink of asthe most mundane field of provision-ing, notions of care, love, and, truth are found to structure consumption activitiesand practices, linking everydayprovisioning practices to the deepest human needs,motivations, and desires (Miller 1998).Likewise, even in the most aestheticized andidentity-driven fields of consumption, such asnew technologies (Belkand Tumbat2005), motor vehicles (Cardenas and Gorman 2007), clothing, food, and drinkbrands (Holt 2004),research shows that consumers of these goods connect to deep,fundamental cultural narratives through their relationship with these objects.Wecannot assume either category of consumption is "shallow" or "deep." Rather, alltypes of consumption,be they reflexiveor banal, routinized or thrilling, are soughtout byus for the purpose of experiencingand delineating thatwhich isgood, beau-

or sacred. In fact, wemight even say that our economic system is organizedm such a way as to produce and distribute these elementary culture-structures inmaterial form (Alexander 2008b). There is accordingly a dialogic process whichconnects cultural discourses of sacred and profanewith the sometimesmundane-and sometimes rousing-engagementswith objects,experiences, and places that wecall "consumption." It might even be, as Callon, Meadel, and Rebaharisoa (2002)

that consumers and producers arereflexivelyinvolved in a type of trystwhich bnngs these good and servicesinto being.In the final section ofthis chapter,I point to ideas about materiality, civility, and consumption etiquettes to seekpotentially fruitful links with work in economics and economic sociology whereresearchers are trying to integrate culture into their accounts of consumptive eco-nomic behaviors.Within sociological studies of consumption, three main subfields have been

prominent over the last few decades. First, there havebeen the bodies of literatureassociated with theories of postmodern cultural change and associated literatures. on the cultural turn. In countering the dominance of critical theory through thetwentieth century, this work emphasized the relative freedoms of consumptionthrough tropes oflifestyle, the flexibleconstructionof self-identity, abundant com-modity culture, and principles of variety, choice, and novelty (Featherstone 1990;


goods isan elementary cultural trait, rather than a preserve of any particular socialclass.Cultural tastes reflectnecessary,inevitable, and activeorientationsto the socialworld in the form of culturally structured, personally felt, and aestheticised prefer-ences.AsBourdieusays:"Taste is the basis of allone has-people and things-andal l one is for others" (1984: 56). Materiality, likewise, is a foundational mode ofhuman experience. It is an element of all material-based consumption practices,though not a.universal component of consumption, as people also consume ser-vicesor engagecognitivelywith aspects of consumptionvia desire, daydreaming, oridealization.The central contention of this chapter is that the potential of this new con-sumption studies to be fruitful has been obstructed by the manner in which thestudy of consumption has been theorized and carried out by some, though not all,ofits leaders. In particular, in this chapter, I take up the following arguments aboutthe state of research in the field. First, I argue that sociologists have typically notgottento the core of consumption asa culturalphenomenabecause they havebeenoverly concerned with customary sociological questions of class,status, and socialinequality. As a relatively new field, consumption studies have tended to draw ontraditional sociological approaches and concepts. Important advancements havebeen made, for example,withinthe oeuvre of postmodern studies of consumptioninthe 1980S (e.g., Featherstone 1987; Jameson 1991); in studies of the productionandcirculation of consumer objects (e.g.,Molotch 2003;Foster 2006); in material cul-ture studies (Appadurai 1986; Miller 1987, 2008) that emphasizes the cultural-anthropological dimensions of objects; and more recently in areas such as thepractices and pragmatics of consumption (e.g.,Dant 2008; Shove and Southerton2000;Warde2005;Watson and Shove2008).Yet, the overall patternis that studies ofconsumptionhave inherited lessuseful features of customary approaches that tendto comprehend consumption through particular frames and that encourage a lesssensitiveunderstanding of consumption practices. For example, despite a coupleofdecades of intensive research on consumption, the fundamental question of whypeople have continuously revitalized appetites for consumer objects remains rela-tively unaddressed in both theoretical and empirical terms. Historically, thesociological focus has been on questions of systemic alienation and consumerexploitation,on distinction and emulation, or on coordinatingsystemsof consumerpractices.Second, I suggest that in largely neglecting the meanings actors attribute to

their own consumption practices, sociologistshave assumed an outsider stanceandhave never been able to bring themselves to fully account for the attractions andseductionsof consumption experienced bymost everyone else.This hasbeen to the rdetriment of a culturally informed theory of consumption that is able to under-stand the deep relations between social actors and objects, and indeed the agenticcapacity of the objects themselves.Moreover,much sociological researcheffort goestoward addressingthe distributions and outcomesof consumpti on practices; essen-tially,what comes after consumption, or its distributed socialeffects.This isin con- .trast to actually understanding its basis and nature as a culturally and materially

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Jameson 1998 Lash and Urry 1994).The second oeuvre derives from the work ofBourdieu (1984),whose studies of the social structures that both form, and derivefrom, certain varieties of consumption emphasizes the role of consumption forreproducing social inequality. Bourdieu's work has inspi red a large volume ofresearchinto the waycultural consumption relates to social difference and inequal-ity.Recently,his legacyhas coalescedin a large body of research on cultural omnivo-rousness and its relationship to changing status systems (Emmison 2003;Petersenand Kern 1996;Van Eijck 2000;Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal2007). Finally,recentstrands of research have emphasized the materialized nature of consumption andthe way peopleuse objects of consumption. In the section that follows,each of thesemajor theoretical schools is criticallyinvestigated.

A FLAWED REVOLUTION: POSTMODERNTHEORIES OF CONSUMPTION

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To a significant degree, the theoretical innovations enabled in postmodern theorychallenged hitherto productionist and materialist logics, showing the centralityofconsumption to both the economic logics of "late capitalism"and affixingto identi-ties and lifeworlds a consumerist and individualist core. In doing so, its impact onthe f ield was alternately l iberat ing and exciting, reductive and misguided.Baudrillard's (1996,1981) early structuraltheories that posited consumer objects asthe "scaffolding" of contemporarysocietywere an important point of inspirationfor the postmodern account of consumption. Fundamental to Baudrillard's prog-ress toward a political economy of consumer objects is the realization that in con-temporary society continualinroads are made by commodificationprocesses to theextent that consumer objects are now primarily things acquired and usedfor sym-bolic value: "Signs (culture) are produced as commodities" (Baudrillard 1981: 147)Social actors are "symbol processors;' a point of view vigorously taken to extremepositions by scholars, influencedby postmodernism, through the next few decades.

Featherstone's (1991,1992) account of the contours of contemporaryconsumercultureisperhaps themost significantwithinthis oeuvre,and isprincipally indebtedto the theoretical work of Jameson (1991), Lash and Urry (1987), Harvey (1989),and the pioneering semiotic analyses of Barthes (1957) and Baudrillard (1996).Featherstone's analysis of the move to a postmodern consumer culture finds theconcept of lifestyle to have particular salience in a postmodern regime of consump-tion. Featherstone (1990) emphasizes the role of pleasure and desire in framing cur-rentconsumptionpractices, centralizingthe notion oflifestyle thathe arguesshouldnot necessarilybe seen as a form of play outside of any social determinants, ratherit"shouldbe regardedmerelyas a new move within it" (1991: 84). The developmentof a postmodern consumer culture rests on an assumption about the widespreaduse of goods as communicators of lifestyle, rather than merely being utilities.


Featherstone (1992) sees this trend as one component of what he has labeled "theaestheticisation of everyday life,"for in a societywhere the commodity sign domi-nates, by default, each person is a symbolic specialist.

Having outlinedthree senses in which the concept of aestheticization has beenemployed, there aretwo relevant applications of Featherstone's (1991) discussion ofthe concept that are applicable to consumers, or at least some social fractions ofthem.The first iswherelifeis conceptualizedas a project ofstyle-where originality,taste, and aesthetic competence are measures of individuality (1991: 67)-and thusbecomes important in shaping social action. This is a project that is no t merelyaccomplishedby the outlayof sheersums of disposable income.While Featherstoneassigns the avant-garde and intellectuals an important role in the dissemination ofnew consumption ideas-and he also endorses Bourdieu's (1984) emphasis on thenew middle class as the fiscalbackbone of the consumer economy-all classes areheldto approach the projectOflifestyle withan outlook that Featherstone labels as"calculating hedonism, a calculus of stylistic effect and an emotional economy"(1991: 86).The notion of "havinga lifestyle" is particularlyuseful for Featherstone'sformulation of consumer culture because it suggests how people across thesocial-cultural spectrum act as symbol processors th rough the coherent andmeaningful deployment of "economies" of commodity objects that may notnecessarily act as social communicators (though they could), bu t more centrallythey afford people various capacities with which to navigate objects, people, andevents:

Rather than unreflexivelyadopting a lifestyle,through traditionor habit, the newheroes of consumer culture make lifestylea life project and display their individu-ality and sense of stylein the particularityof the assemblage of goods, clothes,practices, experiences, appearance and bodilydispositions they design togetherinto a lifestyle.The modern individual within consumer culture is made con-sciousthat he speaksnot only with his clothes, bu t with his home, furnishings,decoration,car and other activitieswhich are to be read in terms of the presenceand absence of taste. (Featherstone1991: 86)The background to this bodyofwork as it emerged in theoreticalexpositions of

the 1990S is that consumption has been aestheticized and semioticized by economi-cally configured processes of hyper-commodification (Featherstone 1991; Jameson1991; Lash andUrry1994;Lury 1996).The logic behind it is a flight fromcriticalver-sions of consumption theory built on the substantial body of literature that hasemerged in the 1980s and 19908 concerning social and economic processes of spa-tialization and semioticization associated with what have been labeled "late"(Jameson 1991) forms of capitalism (see also Beck1992; Harvey1989;Lash andUrry1987,1994;Soja1989). The scene-setting for this approachrests on the identificationofa variety of fundamental transformations in the circulation of global capital andon an array of associated cultural changes that include shifts in the way consumerobjects areproduced and consumed.A principalclaim advanced in this literature isthat thenature of consumptionhas changedascapitalismspatializes and semioticizesin unique ways at an acceleratedpace; and as a corollary, consumption is commonly


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theorized as an important sphere for reflexivelymonitoring self-trajectories. Thepredominance of commodification processes and the cultural dominance of con-sumption are intrinsic counterparts to these processes emphasizing the "cultural-izing" of the economy. Jameson (1988,1991) was one of the first to highlight theincorporation of aesthetic production into commodity production, a trend thatsignifiespostmodern tendencies regarding the breakdown of distinctions betweenhigh culture and mass culture. Thus, objects that circulate in consumer society,includingthe examples used by Jameson of clothes, furniture, and buildings (1983:124),are aestheticized asnew wavesof consumption and areframed through design,style,and art. The quantitativechange in this sphere hasbeen an "immensedilationin the sphere'af commodities, and a quantum leap in the aestheticisation of reality"(Jameson 1998: 124).From the 1980sonward, the postmodern-inspired position became somethingof a mantra and thereafter extremely influential as a point of referencefor studiesof consumption and, to some degree, studies within the related field of materialculture studies. At itsbasisis a broad historical contrast: If consumption could everbe characterized in historical perspective aspredominantlyutilitarian,then by con-trast in the postmodern era, it is characteristicallyconstructive-identity-forming,reflexive, expressive, and even playful. Taken at face value, such a position seemsrevolutionary, and it certainly performed an importantparadigm challenging func-tion at the time. Asan historical proposition, however, it is undoubtedly a mythbecause the degree to which we can ever divorce meaning, reflexivity,and symbol-ism from consumption and object relationships-postmodern or premodern-isdubious. Furthermore,though it dresses itselfup asa cultural account, this positionis based on a type of old-fashionedeconomicdeterminismand offersonly a partialinsight into the nature of consumption practice. Jameson presents a clevertwist oneconomic materialism, but one where the cultural realm remains overdeterminedby shifts in economic structures. Granted, ideas on the incorporation of the aes-thetic into economic production and questions of post-fordist regimes of produc-t ion and consumption are observable and important macroeconomic shifts.However,wecannot read from them assumptions about the nature of consumptionnor can we use the insight to develop a theoretical model of consumption, for we .would alwaysbe looking to largersocial and economicchanges asexplanatorymod-els,rather than looking into the autonomous structures of consumption processesthemselves. The positive theoretical shift enabled by the postmodernmove wastosuggest a radical separation of consumption from production and a certain free-dom for consumersfrom the determinants and fixitiesof class,sociallocation,andascribed identities, offering an analytic scheme that empowered their creativityand flexibility. Though it may ultimately have overemphasized the degree of suchfreedoms, largely ignored questions of materiality and, in addition, framed con-sumption as dependent upon processes of economic flexibilization rather thanconceiving it in culturally autonomous terms, in doing so it offered an extremelyimpor tant historical corrective.


THE MEANINGS OF CONSUMPTION:HEDONISM, CIVILITY, AND THE COLLECTIVE

ORIENTATIONS OF CONSUMPTION.......................................................................................................................

One of the primarypoints of contention surrounding the discourses of consump-tion centers on questions of individualism and hedonism, and the extent to whichconsumerism is culturally and sociallydivisiveor constructive. Aswe have seen,thepostmodern turn in consumption studies hasbeen essentialin redirecting the courseof contemporary consumption studies, though its focus on hedonistic, individual-istic,and fundamentally differentiatingdimensions ignores the collective,civil,andsocially expressive bases of consumption. Bell's (1976) work-though influentialamongst socialscientists and general readers alike-constitutes a characteristicallyshortsightedreflection on hedonismin relationto consumptionthat rests on a nar-row view of the socially corrosive consequences of consumption. In doing so, itreproduces some of the myths of critical theory and sits with a cacheof well-knownauthors from Erich Fromm, John Kenneth Galbraith, Christopher Lasch, andE.F. Schumacherwho have in variouswaysconstructedconsumersocieties and con-sumption asagainst sociality and the principles of informedcitizenship. Bell'smas-terthesis concerns what he labelsa "chiasmus in culture:' the cultural contradictionof contemporarysociety,and "the deepest challengeto itssurvival" (Bell1976: 480).Bell claims a fundamental disjuncture between the systemic social imperatives ofrationality, productivity, and efficiency,and the rising cultural impulses of lifestyle,hedonism,and freedom. Asa consequence,he fears the loss of a transcendent ethicin then emergent post-industrialsociety to guide a common framework for socialvalues.At the heartof this anxiety isthe apparentlyhedonistic regime of consumer-ism,which"fostersthe attitudeof carpe diem, prodigality and display,and the com-pulsive searchfor play" (Bell1976: 478). Ironically-for these valuesare based mostcommonly within the middle class-such values undercut traditional bourgeoiswaysoflife and thus represent a challengeto the most virtuous features ofmodern-ism.In Bell'sview,they have tipped the socialbalance in favor of depthless, corro-sive,and individualistic consumptionhabits.Bell'sthesisfallsshor t of afullunderstandingof the nature of hedonismin rela-

tion to consumption. He sees it as essentiallyunproductive and potentiallydamag-ing, both socially and psychologically.Realistically, and in contrast to Bell'sview,hedonism should be understood as one dimension-but not a singular one ornecessarily of central dimension-of the ongoing generation of a robust ethic ofconsumption, meaning that to assign hedonism as a defining component of con-sumption is misplaced. Working from Miller's (1998) ethnographically based pro-posalof atheoryof shopping-based on notions oflove, sacrifice,and devotion-it. ispossible to see the aspects of material culture and questions of taste based on alogic quite different to that expected by the theory that givespriorityto hedonismand individualization. In fact,it may be that whilehedonism-understood generally


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as pleasure-seeking through consumption-is an important historical discourse inconsumerism, such a discourse exists alongside a counterbalancing and comple-mentary discourse. If left unchecked, the identification of hedonism is frequentlyperceivedby consumersto be counterproductive and personally destructive. Thereis evidence of growing consumer reflexivityin this regard (e.g.,Soper 2007;Wilska2002; Woodward 2001, 2006). This accounts for the checks consumers impose onthe expression of their individual taste narratives and consumption desires. Thus,the existenceof a hedonisticattitudeto consumption-that is unlikely if considereda general, universal feature of consumption, but believable as a style of consump,tion sometimesadoptedby allpeople-has a complementary,disciplining discourseof restraint to keep it in check.

This discourse of restraint, self-discipline, and delayed gratification is,in part,provided for by the construct of taste thatshould be seen asa type of etiquette ofconsumption. This etiquette isidentifiable in commonsense notions of"too little" or"too much:' "appropriateness:' "consideration:' and a multitude of other conceptsused to make judgments about consumption, tas te, and mater ia l culture (seeWoodward andEmmison 2001).Consumption and judgments oftaste arenot merelyindividualistic and hedonistic; and even if they sometimes are, they are bound bytheir own cultural rules and forms of personaland social discipline. These etiquettesof hedonism serveto morally discipline people's consumption choiceswithinmean-ingful frameworks enabled by the contexts of their choices.By providingrationales,narratives, and texts, they frame individual choices as edifying,life-sustaining, andgenerally"good."This helps people define themselves not as desiring subjects,but asseekers of experiences, objects, and practices which improve and sustain the self(Woodward 2001,2003).This etiquette of disciplined hedonism is a robust ethic ofconsumptionbecauseit servesto orientand positionthe individualto othersthrougha collectivesentiment. The notion of taste asan orientation to others isapparentintheway acting in good taste is commonly conceptualized asan attunementto othersthat, in turn, relieson a disciplining or "tempering" of the self (Miller 1993) to fitinand a general respect for other people, especiallythose who are alike.Centrally,itinvolvesquestions of individual conscience and prudence in relation to one's judg-ment about collectiveprocessesand interests (Miller 1995;Schudson 2007).

As a form of pleasure-seeking social behavior, consumption is in some waysand circumstances hedonistic. However,to characterize it as this solelyis mislead-ing. Hedonist desires might account for some of the drive to consumerist practice,though consumptionistemperedbycounterdiscourses ofconsumptiont hatincludethe etiquetteof taste and the goalof livingthe authentic, sacred or"good life:'how-ever tha t might be defined (Soper 2007). Consumption practices, understoodthrough frames of taste via complexes of other related practices, thus offer a con-crete point of connection for people to their cultural values through a variety ofleisure, aesthetic, and material practices, whether they be woodworking, billiards,car driving, shopping, or fashion. Consumptionthus cannot be strongly contrastedwith notions of citizenship-the former coded with negativetraits of individualism,materialism, and selfishnessand the latter a positivemodern political ideal separated

from the rea lm of consumption. Such a reading fai ls to acknowledge the wayconsumption-in whatever seemingly insignificantway,or in wayssome mayper-ceive to be commodified, tasteless, or trivial depending on their own taste judg-ments-can be a political act,an act ofrefusaland individual empowerment, fueledby discourses associatedwith social participation, equality,or inclusivity (Schudson2007). This isnot to argue that consumingwill alwayshave positive effectson suchmatters, or thatit issome type ofpanacea, but thatparticipationis in itselfa matterof importance in establishing part of the contour of civilaffiliations and belonging.Bauman (1988), for example, has also pointed out that the ability to consume isimplicated in socialinclusion and exclusion,being an important dimension of con-temporary citizenship and belonging.

Campbell's (1987) thesis on hedonism and modern consumption is a morepromising attempt to account for the rise and endurance of a consumer ethic ofhedonism. Campbell identifies the basic problem of modern consumerism to bethat the gapbetween wantingand getting a consumer good never closes.In contrastto economic, utility-based theories of consumption, he finds the basis of modernconsumption to be a form of pleasure-seeking based in emotions rather than inphysical sensation. Assuch, his thesis is now likelyperceived by some as outdatedand out of fashion due to its "immateriality:' but I maintain cultural sociologistsneed to look to hiswork to combine materiality-inspired approacheswith the emo-tional and cognitive realms. In his model, the pleasurability of consumption isthemanipulation of psychological desire andmeaninginherentin goods,ratherthan intheir actual, physicalconsumption-"wanting rather than having isthe mainfocusof pleasure-seeking" (Campbell1987:86). Theirony of contemporaryconsumerismisth at hedonism isn't actually about consuming particular objects,but the pleasur-able mental dramas associated with pondering how the consummation of desiremight alter one's reality.Hedonism isthus predominantly autonomous and imagi-native, involving fantasy,daydreaming, and imagination.

Much of the attention given to consumption in the last few decades has beendirected toward theorizingit as zeitgeist-a defining gestalt ofthe era.Such a posi-tion has flagged consumption as a crucial domain of the contemporary lifeworld.However,the downside of this grand levering of consumption "as a more generaltrope forassertions about the so-called postmodernworld" (Miller 1998:164) isthattheoretical adumbration has been more common than empirical investigation,especiallyas it has played out in the British socialtheory tradition. The establishedview of recent accounts is that consumerism isthe most visible element of the his-torical trend toward individualization. Further, consumerismis readily identified asthe most empty,shallowmanifestation of the trend to individualization and isheldto be indulgent, hedonistic, and socially divisive. While the socialand environmen-tal implications of some forms of Western consumerism are to be acknowledged. and should not be ignored by scholars, closesociological attention to the meaningsand motivationsof consumershasshownthat consumptionand matters oftastearemore complex than ideologically motivated accounts of"consumerism"haveimag-ined and thatto understand consumerism, weneed better theories of consumption,

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AESTHETICIZED, INTRICATE REDUCTIONISM:BOURDIEU, CONSUMPTION, AND THE SOCIAL

CORRESPONDENCES OF TASTES

including sensitive accounts of its attractions. As Schudson (2007: 248) comments:"We need to move from moralism and complaint to analysis and action where thenecessary and often enjoyable acts of consuming are appreciated-but where thepolitical structure that makes those acts possible is made visible."Tastescan be saidto be consumption patterns enchanted and envelopedby narrative. It isby carryingout some reconceptualization in the field of taste studies that we can make someprogress along the path suggested by Schudson.

Tastesreferto the range of sensual and cognitivetechniques for evaluatingthe universeof people, objects, events, and experiences to which people are routinely exposed.When measured in the traditionalsociological way-by preferences for, and knowl-edge of, particular cultural goods-tastes can be shown to be intricately structuredand patternedaccording to particularsocial variables. This is the principle contribu-tion made by sociological studies of culture in the field of aesthetic tastes. But, thereisa differentroute to take.AsMaryDouglas hasperceptively expressedit,the contem-poraryproblem of taste and aesthetic choice isno t so much knowing that people haveunique preferences that can be mapped according to certain theoretical principles toform socialpatterns; bu t it"is to get atsome underlying principle of discrimination"(Douglas 1996: 62).Asopposed to tastes understood in wayswhich privilege the willto develop models of structure,we shouldbe focusingon tastes aswaysofbeing in theworld. Bennion (2007: 98) has argued that socialactors immersed in the to-and-froof the flow of objects, images, and people do no t routinelythink of people or thingsas having "tastes:' This is because tastes are in fact a processual and experientialdimension of everydaylife;theyare performed and havea performative quality.Tastesarefeltrather than thought in the first instance, and reflexivelyexercisedvia continu-ally unfolding experiences that bring people and objects together and where princi-ples of evaluation and satisfaction come into playas a matter of course. For culturalsociologythen, the most relevant aspect of tastes arethe ways in which they combinefeelingsfor things and stylesof interaction with objects and people-with the sensesof taste,touch, hearing, and sight-to draw or repel people to various objects.

To tackle the standard models for addressing the question of taste, we mustlookprincipallyto the work of Bourdieu. It is Bourdieu's cultural strandof criticalmaterialism that is embod ied in a number of his key empirical works bu t mostnotably in Distinction (1984), which has most effectively challenged the Kantiannotion of a pure aesthetic judgment. Bourdieu's powerful thesis-which is strongon distributions and socioeconomicmatrices, bu t ratherweakly articulatedin terms


of cultural interpretation-is impelled by a complex theoretical armory and theparticular idea that a pure, disinterested judgment of taste is erroneous. Moreover,Bourdieu maintains that because taste judgments are based on the unequal distri-bution of quotients of cultural capital that have been sanctioned by sociallydomi-nantclasses,aestheticdistinctions areboth generative and reproductiveofsubstantialsocial cleavages.Tastes-again, at least in the way they can be measured and repre-sented in social surveys and statistical analysis-are thus essentially differentiatingcontainers of economic capital that have been converted into culture.

There are two critiquesI wish to make ofBourdieu. The first relates to his meth-odology and the aspects of taste that such an approach reveals and, inevitably,obscures. The burden associated with the application of survey methodology tostudyingtastes is itsfocus on "objective,"variable-friendlymeasures of taste asstatedpreferences in art, music, literature, and the arts ofliving.While numerous studies ofthe socialdistribution of these objective tastes in differentdomains can be found-and much empirical debate and specification continues in this field-there isa rela-tive indifference to the actual logics that inform and, perhaps, even constitute thesepatterns. In their aggregate form and treated primarily as symbolic markers of asocial position, as displays of status and distinction, these objective "judgments oftaste" have become reified or objectified and severed from their underlyinglay con-ceptualor discursive moorings (Woodward and Emmison 2001). Leaving aside thesubstantial question ofwhether cultural tastes, differences, and modes of evaluationareimportant generative resources for socialdifferentiation-andit isreasonabletothink they probably do matter in important ways-the attention to the notion ofcultural dominance in Bourdieu's workis at the expense of uncovering in a system-atic waythe everyday,discursive cultural schemes of taste used by actors to accom-plish a position on taste (seeWoodwardand Emmison 2001). In this sense,Bennion's(2007) reflection on the sociological study of tastes asa type of performative searchis constructive.Not committed to a strongversion of actor-network approaches, bu tnevertheless focusing on the performative elements of people-object engagements,he argues that "taste" refers to the way in which individuals deal with the diversearray of objects, events, and people that they face in everyday settings. Tastes dis-criminate; they also agitate cultural performance and classification.

There is another serious gap in Bourdieu's program for a sociology of taste.Bourdieu isso determined to demonstratehis point about tastes being resources forsocial differentiation and cleavage that he fails to engage with earlier classical con-ceptions of the social meaning of tastes that was developed in the work of SimmelandBlumer, andwhichwere apparent-though in waysoverlookedbyBourdieu-inKant's Critique ofJudgement. In Bourdieu's (1984) influentialmodel of taste and aes-thetic judgment, morality and ethics play an insignificant part in strategies of dis-tinction.Bourdieuoverlooks the collective and moral dimension of taste because his.survey method predominantly affords an account of the social distribution of cul-tu ra l There is little o r n omethodological o ppor tu ni ty for him to developinsights into the moral and collectivelycontoured dimensions of such preferences, apointwhich forms the basis of Lamont's (1992) important study of the moralbasis

MATERIALITY AS CULTURE82

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TASTE

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MATERIALITY AND MATERIAL CULTURE:OBJECTS RELATIONS AND CONSUMPTION


now rather central, status in sociocultural accounts of consumption processes inlate-modern societies. While sociologists and social anthropologists have histori-cally had an enduring concern for the material constituents of culture (Goffman1951; Mauss 1954; Simmel 1904; Veblen 1899), the recent interest in objects hasdeveloped in the context of promin ent sociocultural accounts of modern consum-erism,and, in turn, the emphasis these havegivento the material basis of consump-tion processes (Appadurai 1986; Douglas and Isherwood 1979;Miller 1987;Riggins1994). This field of work began in recent cultural anthropology, especially in thework ofMiller (1987),but also the earlier influentialstudy combining anthropologi-caland economicperspectives byDouglas and Isherwood (1979) and Sahlins (1974),both ofwhom, of course, lookedin no small part to Levi-Strauss andDurkheimforinspiration.

The dominant approach to theorizingconsumption processes that was founda-tional in the sociology of consumption has arisen through theoretical frameworksgenerated by the core motifs of conventional sociological practice: Constraint andopportunity, and freedom and fixity. Broadly, questions of consumer conscious-ness, the political nature of consumerism, and the relative power of the consumervis-a-vis the structuralforces of capitalism havebeen the primary concern for thisapproach. The principal feature here is the positioning of consumption within asocial-structural context, informed by an understanding of issues such as media,marketing, and socialclass.The organizing themes which frame consumer practicein this approach are centered on background models of political and economicpower,choiceand constraint. At a more abstractlevel,they aregrounded broadly inquestions of agencyand structure. This reliance on dichotomous theoretical meta-phors iswhat ledMiller (1995) to summarizethis type of sociology of consumptionasencouraging the reductionist myth that consumerism was either "good" or "bad:'rather than a complex, multidimensional process.The lineage of these approachescan be traced from Marx, and through twentieth-century varieties of criticalthought, such asLukacs,Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Adorno. In contrast, the "objectturn" in studies of consumer culture transfers attention to the intrinsic materialityof many consumption processes. Particularly, it has suggested a role for objects ingenerating cultural meanings; in doing social and cultural work through processes.of differentiation, objectilication, and integration (Appadurai 1986; Baudrillard1996; Douglas and Isherwood 1979). While the material culture approach to con-sumption retains a concern for consumer practice and ideation-as the founda-tional studies of consumption had previously emphasized-it devotes particularattention to the object of consumer interestas "the visible part of culture" (Douglasand Isherwood 1979: 44) that servesto animate practice and evoke feelingsin con-sumers. Thefieldof materialculturestudies hasprovidedperhaps the most promis-ingand culturallysophisticatedapproachto consumption,emphasisingsymbolism,. r itual , and meaning as the basis for def ining consumption as a type of cultura linterpretation.Yet, while this body of work coming under the rubric of materialculture studies hasbeen extremely valuable in a range of ways,again it has not beendecisivein addressing basic questions about consumer culture. Often, it has led to


More recently,and happening somewhatin parallel to the development ofthesetwofields,there has been a growing interestin materialityand material culture.Attentionto objects asrudimentary elements of consumer culture has acquiredrenewed, and

of modes of interpersonalevaluation.Bourdieu's conceptualmodel isthus primarilybased in the domain of private,individualpreferencesrather than public, civilexpres-sions, where we could expect collectiveand moral dimensions to be exercised.Incontrast, the studies of Halle (1993),Miller (2008), Riggins (1994), and Woodward(2001,2003) begin to account for the diverseforms of "astructural"knowledge asso-ciatedwith tastes-the realm of emotion, identity,meaning, and narrative. This doesnot meanthat thistypeof approach could not be consistent with the developmentofstructural accounts, but that such methodologies and approaches affordinsight intoamore diverserange of aestheticexpressions and experiencesand a consideration oftheir socially productive effects. The language of these studies is grounded inconcepts-such as contemplation, meaning, intimacy, kinship, and emotion-asopposed to Bourdieu and his intellectual predecessors in this vein, Veblen andSimmel, who focus on dynamics of status, prestige and emulation.

While both ofthese bodies ofwork-postmodern studies of consumption andBourdieu's cultural materialism-have been extremely important in energizingcontemporary consumptionstudies, neither hasbeen decisivein addressing centralproblems relevant to understanding contemporary consumer culture. The formerhas usefully emphasised freedom, play, and self-identity, and to a large degree isresponsiblefor contemporaryassumptions about consumptionas an activeprocessof symbolic interpretationand manipulation.But,it haslargelyignored the anchor-ing culture-structures which animate and make sense of consumption.The latter ofthese influential oeuvres within consumption studies is inspired by the workof Bourdieu. Though this body of research is apparentlyempiricallysophisticated,along the lines of methodologicalpositivism, it can be criticized as reductivist andunidimensionalbecause through itsfocus on the distributed patterns and effectsofconsumption, it has largely ignored questions of meaning, interpretation, andperformance; the things that comprise and constitute the very social efficacy oftastes. Bourdieu's ouevre-and the subsequent work it has inspired-is largely avariable-centered approach; useful for establishing benchmark patterns and thesocioeconomic correlates of consumption patterns; but it obscures asmuch aboutconsumption and tastes asit reveals.For various reasons then, which arediscussedfurther in this chapter, recent sociology has been unable to answer basic questionsabout the fundamental cultural characteristics and dimensions of consumerism asan aesthetic relationship to the world of commodity objects.


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methodologically reflexive, locally contextualised studies of the uses of objectswithin small cultural groups and by individuals who have demonstrated agency,emotionality, and complexity (Warde 2005),bu t done little to expose the culturalstructures that are at the core of the culturalsociology approach.A more recent and related development-that looks to move beyondmaterial

culture studies bu t still deals with materiality-comes largely from sociologicalstudies of science and technology and has been expressed recently in the form ofstudies of consumption practices and pragmatics. In social theory, this focus on"assemblages of materials" hasbeen associatedwith actor-networktheory that dealswith collapsing the distinction between people and material objects and the forma-tion of material assemblages. In new studies of objects as "actants"-inspired byideas of relationality and pragmatics and blended with new ethnography in thework of Latour and then alsoa cache ofwriters who have extendedand applied hisinsights in very useful ways (e.g., Law 2002)-the "material" element has been thesubject of much research and theoretical interest often at the expense of the "cul-ture" aspects.What comes first arethe materialinterlinkages of person and object,rather than questions of meaning, narrative, and interpretation. To some degree,this is compatible with the most exciting anthropological work in the tradition ofMauss, Durkheim, and Gell, but in sociology,it has been used most frequently inrelation to technological systems, assemblages, and engagements, and indeed haseschewed questions of human motivations and meanings that would seem centralwhenone wishesto understandconsumption. It hasalsobeen representedin emerg-ing studies of the"practices"of consumption (Dant2008;Warde 2005;Watson 2008;Watson and Shove 2008). Here, too, though coordinated networks of people andthings are given priority in organizing social life, questions reside with materialpragmatics and networked relationality more than actual consumption practice,obviously leaving significant cultural elements relatively unaddressed. Tosome, thisfocus on practiceseems productive because it does not presume or speculate aboutculturalcategories,meaning, or symbolism but identifies how"consumption occurswithin and for the sakeof practices" (Warde 2005: 145).The appeal of attending tosuch consumption practices seems to be that they are universal, habitual, and con-tinually unfolding within interrelated networks of other practices and hence havean apparent recursive material quality.But, this view also offers a rather restrictedand truncated account of consumption, leaving out questions of cultural complex-ity,interpretation, and meaning. Such a viewis in danger of radically selling shortthe cultural realm, despite Warde's suggestion that culture has receivedtoo muchemphasis in studies of consumption (2005: 147).Warde even goes so farto state that"itis the fact of engagement in the practice, rather than anypersonaldecision abouta course of conduct, that seems to explain the nature and process of consumption"(Warde 2005:138). Awhole bodyof work within sociology and consumer behaviorstudies enables a more complex picture to be drawn (see, e.g., Belk1988; BelkandTumbat 2005;Holt 2004;Kleine and Kernan 1991; McCracken 1988; Richins 1994)Warde further states that most consumption is directed toward the "fulfilment ofself-regarding purposive projects" (2005: 147),which itselfsuggestswe need to look

Ata literal andmundanelevel,taste isthe evaluation of things, such asmatching col-ors, appropriate skirt lengths, or shoe heel sizes; the optimal way to spend leisuretime; one's choice(or nonchoice) in lounge covering,preferencesfor antique or newfurniture, howone'skitchen renovation was planned; and the search for appropriate,

AN ARGUMENT FOR A MORALLY SITUATEDPERFORMATIVE THEORY OF CONSUMPTION: TASTEAND CONSUMPTION AS A SEARCH FOR THE SUBLIME


well beyond the realm of pragmatics of material interactions to understandconsumption. In short,this is not to suggest that the physical,material, and sensualcomponents of various modes of "doing"-driving a car,drinking wine, hitting aball, preparing food-are not important, but that the risk with the "practices"approachis that we develop distinctly thin accounts that attend to systems of coor-dinated perceptions and physical manipulations and losemuch ofthe culturalcon-text tha t could afford us a s tronger theory of consumption as an endur ingcultural-economic activity. To do this must involve using ideas of taste to thinkmore deeplyabout the nature of"self-regarding purposive projects" to whichWarde(2005) refers.Interestin the capacity of objects to afford movement between pragmatic, aes-

thetic engagements "atthe surface:' and the depth of meaningswithin things, isonefruitful way to overcome the deficiencies of the practices approach. Though notoriginating from a pragmatic basis,such an approach nevertheless deals with mat-ters ofmaterialityand surfaces,bu t seeksto connect themwith the socialdiscoursesand narratives beneath.Alexander's (2008b) studyof iconicity, for example, modelsthe exchangesbetweensocialactors and objects.He showshow objects afford move-ment from surface to depth via a form of "immersion."Immersion involvesa dualprocess: one called "subjectification" where people are able draw an object intothemselves, transforming it from object to subject and allowing it to take on a lifewhereby one no longer seesthe object itself, but "oneself, one's projections, one'sconvictions and beliefs" (Alexander 2008b: 7). Simultaneously, through a processcalled"materialization:'a personis drawninto an object, effectivelybecoming it,orwhat it isseento standfor.Viaimmersion,what existsisnot an object, nor aperson,but a oneness of material and human, united by a material-affective-rather thanmerely mechanical or pragmatic-connection. Such connections with consumed,material objects arethe basis for the performance and learningof norms and idealsand-through the use of typifications and iconic representations-the foundationfor our collectivelife. Though not all engaging with ideas of iconicity, Swedberg(2005), Benzecry (2008), and Miller (2008) work from similar assumptions andconnect material culture to questions of narrative, belonging, myth, and discourse.



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explanatory advantage. Aesthetic judgments are embellished with a variety ofconcepts and words and located within a range of discursive rationales, however, inthe end, they are judged assatisfying or not, good or bad. One of Durkheim andMauss's other principal insights is that classification is a process of marking-off, ofdemarcatingthingswhich arerelatedbu t have distinctpoints of difference to another.These systems of ideas of relation and difference serve to connect and unify knowl-edgeabout the world. Theybuild up a hierarchical systemwhere ideas form chainsof meanings, and these meanings come to be concretizedin material forms. In TheElementary Forms of theReligious Life (1915), Durkheim extends this theory of clas-sificationto two important areas that are relevant.The first isto show that systems ofclassification have moral qualities. Classifications are no t merely technical accom-plishments, bu t come to obtain their cultural weight by virtue of a moral qualityattachedto their deliberation (1915: 451). In weighingup theworldof objects, a moralforce comes to be activated, and this, in large part, explains their robustness anddepth. Merelypretty or sparlding surface is not enough, bu t such aesthetic qualitiesare united withthe strongest cultural powers when they draw participants into themoral and aesthetic meanings of an object (Alexander 2008b). The Durkheimiantradition also establishes these material-moral systems of classification as evidenceof the socialness of systems of representation. Systems of classifying people, objectsand things are thus linked to a collective consciousness-they obtain meaning byreference to other socially sanctioned classifications. The sentiments of taste con-tained in aesthetic judgments are not merely representative of emptied-out, ersatzforms of individualism, nor arethey merely distributedvariables representing socialstructures of inequality, bu t have acquired a moral force that gives them durabilityand strength as principles directing everydaysocial action.

Combined with this idea that consuming affords people entry to particularmoral depths, ideas aboutsocial performancewithin cultural sociology offer a via-ble way to imagine consumption as an active and contextual process demonstratedthrough ongoing performances that fuse people with objects of consumption inparticular social settings. Recent developments in performance theorywithin cul-tural sociology have emerged by fusing a range of theoretical traditions. Goffman(1959) used the concept of performance to explain the enactment of social rolesaccording to the logic of status management. More recent developments in perfor-mance theory (Geertz 1973; Turner 1982; Schechner 1993; Butler 1997; Alexander2004a,2004b) seek to understand the performative character of identityby drawingon theoretical resources of symbolic action and ritual and social drama to showhow social action is contingent on history and collective sentiments, bu t must bebrought into existence by continuous performative acts that actualize and repro-duce the identities of social actors (Butler 1997: 409). In his exposition of the ele-ments of performance,Alexander (2004b: 529) defines culturalperformance as


the socialprocessby which actors, individuallyor in concert,display for othersthe meaningof the social situation.This meaning mayor may not be one towhich they themselves consciouslyadhere; it isthe meaning that they, as socialactors, consciously or unconsciouslywish to have others believe.In order for their

MATERIALITY AS CULTURE88beautiful,or functional things to fill one's house. But, isthere a largermeaningto suchminutiae of everydayaesthetics?The elementaryplace to start iswith a bedrockideasof good and bad. Tojudge somethingor someone as good or bad is a philosophicalproblem of substance, for it involves a series of thought processes that subsumenotions of desirability, needs and wants, satisfaction, rightness, efficiency, pleasure,and obligation (Sparshott 1958).Atthe same time, from a sociologicalpoint of view,judgments of what is good and bad for us or o ther s wou ld seem to be routi ne ,recurrent, and taken-for-granted elements of life.However philosophicallyfoggyandmisplaced vernacular evaluations of good and bad may be in orienting tastes, theyseem an inescapable componentof social existence and can be found inmyriadmun-dane feelings,such as:"eating somethingwould be good;'"exercisewouldbe good forme;' "to buy a new shirt would be good:' Sparshott (1958: 122) outlines the simplemeaning of good to be that which "is such to satisfy the wants ofthe person or per-sons concerned." While Sparshott does not concern himself with notions of badthings, it is reasonable to assume that bad things failto satisfy the wants, or at leastpeople believe that they will fail to satisfyparticularwants. It seemslikely that every-daynotions of what is perceived as likelyto satisfy,and what is perceivedas likelytofail to satisfy,are reflective of almost universal human habits and traits of judgmentor evaluation. Such notions of satisfaction invariably carry references to a state ofincompleteness, equivalent to Baudrillard's idea of lack, because there is an impliedreferenceto a desirable"good" or undesirable"bad"object or personwhich haspoten-tial to satiate desire. Sparshottputs it this way in his inquiryinto goodness, "desiresand needs are alike deficiencies, and carry a reference to a perfected or completedsomewhat" (1958: 133). Judging the ability of a thingor person to potentially completeor satisfyisan essentialelementof our culture-it isthe basisof the actof consumption,andis amandatoryroutine ofour livesthatinvolvesnavigatingmyriad options in ordertoweighvalue,to findmerits or deficiencies, and to decide in favor or againstsomething(Sparshott 1958: 128).AsSparshott pointed out overhalf a century ago,welivein a cul-ture of evaluation, and the notion of good-and by implication also the notion ofbad-are universal binary operators in these everyday judgments: "Such argumentstend to present themselvesin theform:good or bad?"(Sparshott1958: 128).

Durkheim and Mauss's (1963) theory of classification is an elementary theoreti-calsignpost in considering this aspect of consumption. The deduction to be drawnfrom theirwork is that notions of aesthetic taste are primarily systems of classifica-tion andthat these complex and nuancedsystems of practice are related to the fun-damental moral organizing notions of "good" and "bad." Thus, consideringconsumption, certain practices of taste, and particular types or styles of materialculture (e.g., fashion and clothing, domestic objects, motor vehicles), come to beevaluated as "beautiful;'"timeless;' "elegant;' "vulgar;' "garish;' or "unsuitable"; but,in the end, are classified as in the realm of good or in the realm of bad. This isasimple, bipartite system of classification, and condensing the complexities of tasteand aesthetic judgmentto this binaryscheme is a useful guiding principleof inquiry,rather than a strategy for directing empirical inquiry. However, it has the advantageof illustrating how such judgments come to acquire an ethical force and, hence, an


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display to be effective,actors must offer a plausible performance, one that leadsthoseto whom their actions and gestures are directedto accept their motives andexplanations asa reasonable account.Cultural performance models could be fruitfully applied within the field of

consumptionstudies.They suggest that the way consumer objects acquire their cul-tural meaningis within local settings, where people confer consumption objects associal life through their use and by offering active, creative accounts, or narrativesthat link in some ways to autonomous cultural discourses. Such narratives arelocally accomplished phenomena, existing within various social settings whereindividuals arecalled to offera believable,convincing, or "fused" (Alexander 2oo4a)account of their relations with consumer objects. The performativemodel suggeststhere should be an aesthetic"fusion" between the material and discursive,articula-tion and reception: "A coming together of background meaning, actors, props,scripts, direction and audience" where performances areexperienced asconvincingor authentic by participants (Alexander 2004a:92). Such a model suggests a usefulwayof thinking about consumption,integratingmaterialitywith narrative, context,desire, meaning, and communicationwithin contextualized settings.

CONCLUSION

Along with developing culturally sensitive empirical approaches that account forhuman-object interactions, cultural sociologies of consumption must begin toschematize the basic culture-structures that inform consumer practice. Here, anelementalstructure needs reemphasis.The pursuit and evaluation of things that areperceived to satisfy or givepleasure is a basic human pursuit. Good things satisfy ,and give pleasure. Bad things generate anxiety, contaminate, and offend. Decidingwhat is poor, polluted, bad, or somehow inferior, and hence to be avoided, andalternately,what issafe,pleasurable, good, and enhancing is a fundamental culturaltrait. Skillsof discernmentand evaluation operate in numerous domains of lifeandare culturalproficiencies that are at the very heartof practices of consumer behav-ior,tastes, and materialengagements. In fact, it may be correct to seethat one ofthereasons people become attachedto having consumer "freedoms"is that these seem-ingly minor, routine choices become occasions for feeling the empowerment ofone's discriminatory faculties and for seeking potentially ecstatic, transformativeengagements with objects.

It is in these engagements with the world of commodities-as we do suchapparentlymundane human things as nourish, entertain, decorate, play,and pon-der-that wemake culture. Norbert Eliaspointed out in The CivilisingProcess thatthe character of human threats has undergone an historical change. For the mostpart, he pointed out, weno longer livein fear of physical threat or danger; but onethreat we continually face is social embarrassment and shame that derives from a


breach of rules of civility.Elias highlighted the sphere of manners asa domain ofetiquette that had potential to generate individual anxiety. But his historical, pro-cessualtheory suggeststhat the location of the source of threats will change, so thatzonesof experiencing shame continuouslyshift to newprovinces of sociallife.Theallieddomains of consumption and aesthetic taste are contemporaryfields for thenegotiation of socialacceptability, the exclusion, or minimization of contaminatingmaterial culture, and the striving for approval, individuality, and transcendence. Ina society where commodities, styles, fashions, and taste proliferate to a degreebeyond what could be considered general abundance, people's understandings ofwhat constitutes good taste-and good more universally-become increasinglyfixedon the navigation of a meaningful course through the forest of consumptionchoices.The activity of judgment and classification has a universal application tohuman culture. Assessment, evaluation, and discernment are routine elements ofdaily life-myriad choices confront people to which, in the interests of efficient,culturally acceptable social conduct, they must selectively acknowledge and makeresponses. The operation of judgment and the establishment of a choice is espe-ciallysalientin an erawhere newconsumption domains have emerged, being drivenby the interplay of structural dynamics, such as aestheticization, commodification,and individualization.

Thoughclearand unmediatedsymbolic communicationshould not be assumedin any culture where symbols proliferate and change meaning with speed, we cansaythat material culture-the objects,things, or commodities people purchase anduse-affords symbolic evidence of a person's taste, and more broadly, is generativeof their socialidentity. Yet, theycommunicate as much about oneselfto oneself asthey do to others. Further , notions of what is civi l and uncivil, meaningful andmeaningless,valuable and trite, arefounded in part on the decisions a personmakesin relation to what isworthy or suitable forwearing, watching, possessing,listeningto, and eating. The marketfor commoditieshas thus becomea sphere for the estab-lishment of norms of civility.These cultural values become visible and expressedviamaterialmeans. Explaining how commodities are important for realizing feel-ingsof collectiveand civilbelongingshould be one concern of cultural sociologicalinquiries into taste and aesthetics. Studies of taste should be seen to constituteinvestigations of etiquette, and studies of everydayaesthetic judgment are not justabout what is considered beautiful (contra Kant), but what is considered good.Accounts of civility, social inclusion and exclusion,boundaries, social etiquette, andthe human desirefor pleasure can be illuminated bystudying everyday understand-ings of taste and their accomplishment through processes of judgment, selection,and justification. Seenin this light, the exploration of a consumption field isactu-allyan analysisof the socialboundaries of goodness,worth, and value, as expressedbythe participants' notions of taste and the deploymentof material culture.

This line of argument isfounded partly on the assumptions that decisions oftaste and judgments of aesthetic value containan implied commitment to a collec-tive-but obviously socially variegated to some degree-notion of what is goodand bad to consume. The deployment of the notions "good" and "bad" are not


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experienced as philosophical conundrums for actors, as they become natural ortaken-for-granted modes of interaction with the world. Judgments about people,their behaviors, and material culture happen routinely and are frequentlybased onthis binary opposition of good and bad, helpful or harmful, worthy or worthless.While a collectivelyshaped notion of"good" and "bad"becomes the basis or masterscheme for a retrievable complex of resources or narratives used in everydayjudg-ments; according to variablessuch asage,class,peer group, and education level,weembellish these oppositions with a variety of words and concepts that give"good-ness"and "badness" unique hues acrossdifferent contexts. In this way,it is possibleto see how the idea of distinguishing between good and bad types has particularrelevance to the practice of consumption, for at its core, consumption is a processof selection or discernment of things that are perceived to satisfy. It is not correctthat judgments of good and bad are alwaysabout civility and never about power,authority, difference, and inequality. In fact, these things are part and parcel of theestablishment of such civilities.Clearly,consumption becomes a process of makingand marking boundariesby materializing cultural categories.Yet, by insisting thatacts of consumption and judgments of taste are worthy of sociological consider-ation in their own right-and that domains of consumption can be analyzedas anautonomous sphere of cultural activity-an alternative to predominant strands inthe sociology of taste that privilege structure and status in accounts of aestheticjudgment can be posited.The etiquettes of aesthetic cultures constitute an important area for furtherresearch in the field of consumerism. If consumerism is identified asan enduringsocial, economic, or environmental problem or issue,then to understand why it issorobust, energetic, and appealing asa way of life,sociologists should direct atten-tion to showing how it is internalized in the language, narratives, and dreams ofpeople, objects, and events. Campbell's (1987) ambitious theoretical work on thepossibility of an historicallyembedded romanticethic of consumption seemsto be ,one of the most promising explanations ofwhyconsumerismis such a robust ideol-.ogy,yet hiswork remains largely at the levelof historical interpretation and theory...There is a need for studies of consumption that attempt to integrate culture andcognitionin orderto assessthe role of fantasy,daydreaming,and other a culturallyrelevant psychosocial factors in generatingcultural responses. Bourdieu, despite theflaws in his approach identified in this chapter, has perceptively pointed out thatsociological understandings of taste are akin to psychoanalysis because they dwell.on the deep reasons why individuals are attracted to particular forms of culture(1984: 11, 77).

A cultural sociological account of consumption can also help to shape aspects;of emerging theories within economic sociology.In the last few decades, cultural ..research, aswell aswork within the discipline of economics, has argued thatideallized,abstractedmodels of the economicactor that dominatemainstreameconomictheory are too narrowly conceived to capture the complexity of economic behav-iors. Questions of identity, socialstatus, desire, group norms, and cultural catego- .ries are starting to become crucial for economists. For example, Akerlof and.


colleagues (Akerlof 1997; Akerlof 2007;Akerlof and Kranton 2000) have positionedcultural concepts such as identity and status perception at the core of these newtheories, which seek generally to incorporate nonpecuniary motivations intoaccounts of economicbehaviors. Thesegroundbreakingefforts arecloser to a socio-logicalpsychology than a cultural sociology,but better models of cultural-economicaction can inform future modeling. Likewise,the field of economic sociology andcultural sociology have begun to address questions of price, value, preference, andutility from their own perspectives (e.g.,Wherry 2008).The basic principle here isthat economic action is culturally meaningful and culturally derived, rather thanmerely rational from an economic point of view.Here, literatures in the sociologyof arts and cultural sociology that investigate the aesthetic surface of objects andtheir capacity not only to represent aspects of reality,but also to prompt reflexive,cognitive responses in actors and collectivesare important (seeAcord and Di Nora2008;Alexander 200sb; Eyerman and Ring 1998; Eyerman and McCormick 2006;Swedberg2005).Thus, economic actors orienttheir actions to goalsthat make sensenot justin terms ofprice and utility,but in a range ofother matters which are attheheart of cultural sociological investigation. The emergent cultural sociologicalapproachsuggeststhat weshould think of the economicbehaviors of individuals asguided by ideas, impressions, fantasies, irrationalities, asymmetries, perceptions ofselfand others, and impressions of"what isgoing on" with their own budget andthe broadly configured "economy."All this is fueled by circulating texts within theeconomy including such things as product advertising, magazines, commoditybranding, and the reporting of pronouncements from officialeconomicbodies andeconomic commentators. As much as powerful economic modeling, the goal ofgenerating a convincing theory of economic behavior requires a strong theory ofculture and sensitive empirical approaches. As a starting principle, this researchagenda requires a cultural sociological model that fuses performative understand-ings of the materiality and sensuality of consumption with consideration of the. power of myth, narrative, and meaning generation.

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