Consumer identities

Consumer culture is deeply implicated in the fabrication of identities: it produces consumers, and does so in a variety of ways. For a growing variety of activities, growing numbers of people now speak of themselves as consumers, and they are being addressed as consumers by a host of institutions, within and without the market. The centrality of the ‘consumer’, the lengthy and contested historical processes which led to its formation, the many theoretical portrayals of consumer agency which have followed each other in a succession of criticism and cross-reference, the political implications of conceiving contemporary culture as made of consumers are addressed in this chapter. Placing emphasis on the social, cultural and institutional processes which have made consumption into a contested field of social action and public debate, the chapter considers how consumer identities have been constructed and promoted as a major social identities in contemporary societies.