‘Consumer society gives people choice.’ Discuss the claim.
Living in today’s consumer society gives us the freedom to choose dependant on our status, both social and financial. There are two arguments in this type of society – our choices are widened or our choices are restricted – and these arguments intensify when we bring the multitude of consumer channels into the mix.
Consumer society is a society that is defined by what we buy and the use to which we put things. ‘Consumer society’ is a term used by many social scientists, including Zygmunt Bauman, when referring to contemporary Western society. Hetherington states that the shift away from the term ‘industrial society’ to ‘consumer society’ began with the decline in traditional manufacturing industries in the 1980’s. (Hetherington, 2009 p 22).
In the industrial society the consumer was identified by either employment or career choices, their professional status or their nationality. The perception was that only those who had a professional status (for example, doctors or bank managers) could afford to consume more than necessities, after all, they were wealthy. They could afford expensive possessions that they bought from specialist shops where goods were visible but couldn’t be handled. These luxury items were expensive and not supplied plentifully so those who were identified on the lower ends of the social scale didn’t even attempt to buy them.
Today consumption is about more than buying things for their use. Following the decline in the manufacturing industries there was an increase in employability in the middle class service sector for the working classes. This along with the arrival of retail parks, supermarkets and department stores meant that consumption changed; everyone except the poor could afford the goods previously only attainable by the well paid and wealthy. We no longer buy goods for necessity or to ‘keep up with the Jones’. Now our interest lies in consuming to reflect our...