Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities

by Grant McCracken

Book Overview

"This book compiles and integrates highly innovative work aimed at bridging the fields of anthropology and consumer behavior." --Journal of Consumer Affairs

" . . . fascinating . . . ambitious and interesting . . . " --Canadian Advertising Foundation Newsletter

" . . . an anthropological dig into consumerism brimming with original thought . . . " --The Globe and Mail

"Grant McCracken has written a provocative book that puts...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253206286
• ISBN13: 9780253206282
• Release Date: November 1990
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.2"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

it's great!

it's a great and enlightening book but it's for a graduate studies student, not for an undergrad.

How consumption creates consumer meaning.

This is the source to anthropological understanding on how consumption creates a brand meaning. Likewise how consumption creates consumer meaning.

You Bought the Rolex But Forgot the BMW?

"Man is a rebel against nature. He is prone to accept few things as they come. In all matters it is his irrepressible belief that by his tinkering he can improve upon them. His instrument is culture." Mary Ellen Roach, Dress, Adornment, and The Social OrderRecall the last time you presented a gift to someone. Was it really a gift for them, or did you only give the gift so that the recipient would assume the symbolic properties of the item, and therefore become more like the person you would like them to be? How about your last major purchase-was it a replacement for something that no longer fits your standards, now that your standards no longer fit your past purchases? An individual would be hard pressed to come up with, let alone answer questions like these without serious thought and reflection, yet these and many others come to mind while reading "Culture and Consumption" by Grant McCracken.Mr. McCracken beckons us to question ourselves, our motives, and the whole rationale behind what we are doing when we make a purchase in the marketplace, whether it is for ourselves or someone else. While popular opinion and social scientific study purport that materialism is one of the things that is most wrong with our society, the author shows that the goods that are so often identified as the unhappy, destructive preoccupation of a materialistic society are in fact one of the chief instruments of its survival-one of the ways in which its order is created and maintained. While Mary Ellen Roach and others like her declared that yes, man likes to control things, Mr. McCracken goes many steps forward. He disregards and even insults former theorists on consumption in an attempt to reverse the gears of thinking on modern consumption practices. Accordingly, clothing is not language. In fact, clothing is "quite unlike language and best communicates cultural meaning when it departs from the syntagmatic principle on which language operates." Also, the popular trickle down theory of diffusion is actually "an upward "chase and flight" pattern created by a subordinate group that "hunts" upper class status makers and a superordinate social group that moves on in a hasty flight to new ones." Quite modestly, the author admits that his work "begins the rapprochement. It does not pretend to accomplish it."Mr. McCracken demonstrates that all the other theories about consumption are wrong or at least flawed. He questions them, and then points the way to a new understanding of how and why we are consumers. By his decree, our culture follows very distinct consumption patterns. With his review of the history of consumption to the present day, the author shows a consistent and lineal progression to the mass misunderstanding of today's marketplace. According to him, culture and consumption are inextricably intertwined, and he has attempted to unweave the elements of this intimate rapport for our perusal. He casts doubt u