1st Edition
Consuming Symbolic Goods Identity and Commitment, Values and Economics
The phenomenon of consumption has increasingly drawn attention from economists. While the ‘sole purpose of production is consumption’, as Adam Smith has claimed, economists have up to recently generally ignored the topic.
This book brings together a range of different perspectives on the topic of consumption that will finally shed the necessary light on a largely neglected theme, such as
- Why is the consumption of symbolic goods different than that of goods that are not constitutive of individuals’ identity?
- How does the consumption of symbolic goods affect social processes and economic phenomena?
- Will taking consumption (of symbolic goods) seriously impact economics itself?
The book discusses these issues theoretically, and, through analyses of such cases as food, religion, fashion, empirically as well. It also discusses the possible role in the future of consumption.
This book was previously published as a special issue of Review of Social Economy
Consuming Symbolic Goods: Identity & Commitment - Introduction
Author: Wilfred Dolfsma (idem.); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253891
Lauding the Leisure Class: Symbolic Content and Conspicuous Consumption
Author: Alan Shipman (Cambridge University); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253909
Consumption, Identity, and the Sociocultural Constitution of "Preferences": Reading Women's Magazines
Author: Martha A. Starr (American University); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253918
You Are What You Eat: The Social Economy of the Slow Food Movement
Author: Bruce Pietrykowski ( University of Michigan-Dearborn); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253927
Consuming Values and Contested Cultures: A Critical Analysis of the UK Strategy for Sustainable Consumption and Production
Author: Gill Seyfang ( University of East Anglia); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253936
Religious Identity and Consumption
Authors: Metin M. Cogel; Lanse Minkler (University of Connecticut); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253945
Paradoxes of Modernist Consumption - Reading Fashions
Author: Wilfred Dolfsma (idem.); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253954
Are Unpreferred Preferences Weak in Symbolic Content?
Author: David George (Lasalle University, Philadelphia); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253963
The Gift Paradox: Complex Selves and Symbolic Good
Author: Elias L. Khalil (Monash University, Australia); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253972
Deriving the Engel Curve: Pierre Bourdieu and the Social Critique of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Author: Andrew B. Trigg (Open University, UK); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253987
The Post Affluent Society
Author: Amitai Etzioni (George Washington University); DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253990
Biography
Wilfred Dolfsma is both an economist and philosopher and holds a PhD in the former. He is attached to the Utrecht School of Economics as an Associate Professor, to Maastricht University (UNU-MERIT) as a professorial fellow, and is corresponding editor for the Review of Social Economy. He has won the Hellen Potter best article award and the Gunnar Myrdal best book award. His research interests are the interrelations between economy, society and technology. He has published on various aspects of media industries, feminist economics as well as on globalisation, and the developments in and effects of IPR. In addition, as an institutional economist, Dolfsma does research in the history and methodology of economics, and consumption.
