Summary of the book Consumption and lifestyles a short introduction, written by Dieter Bögenhold and Farah Naz. This is literature for the course lifestyles and consumption (CHL20806) at Wageningen University.
Summary of the book Consumption and life-styles: a short introduction, written by Dieter Bögenhold & Farah Naz
Chapter 1 – Introduction
Consumption can be described as taking something in order to receive or use it, which is a very
broad description. Consumption can also be described as a formal or informal contract between
parties including payment, this is a more narrow and economical view.
Consumption is part of many disciplines. The ones mentioned in this chapter are economics,
business administration and sociology. Each looks at consumption from a different angle. The
growth of these disciplines seems to be responsible for the fragmentation of insights and
information. Which means that there is no connection between the knowledge of these
disciplines. Therefore, it is hard to conceptualize subjects as closed and single-typed.
Society and goods
Societies are permanently changing, they have their own histories, markets and cultures that
determine “the rules of the game”. For example, the norms in societies determine which goods
and legal and which are illegal. This can differ per country of culture.
Goods can be seen as goods. Goods can also be seen as more complex objects with different
forms, meanings, degrees of social acceptance, and markets, depending on which discipline one
looks from. Consumption processes are obviously connected to fluid borders between formal
and informal markets and their organization.
Consumption and lifestyle
Consumption is inevitably connected to lifestyle, preference, and taste. In this book the link
between consumption and lifestyle explains how and why people consume the way they do.
Lifestyle determines much of our taste. Examples of this are a) Gans’s differentiation between
popular culture and high culture, which is about practical value of consumption versus a
distinctive form of consumption (Veblen), b) Goffman’s view of consumption as influence on
one’s social position in a stratified society, c) Lamont and Lareau on inclusion and exclusion, and
d) how the middle and lower class consume, how they only “manage material survival”.
Two trends in consumption
In the last 20 years two trends in consumption have emerged. The first is the evolution of
electronic markets. The concept of markets changed from fragmented, geographical markets to
one central global market in which consumers became prosumers. The second trend is the
growing awareness for sustainability, which changed consumer behavior. Consumers are more
informed partly due to digitalization.
This book tries to look at consumption from different views and different disciplines. It gives a
comprehensive and short introduction to consumption and lifestyle.
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