Zygmunt Bauman – Critical Theorist of Consumer Culture

Critical thinker par excellence; Critical theorist of consumer culture. These are accolades that might be bestowed on the now departed sociologist cum philosopher of consumer culture: Professor Zygmunt Bauman. This chapter seeks to explore the contribution that a turn to his work might make to reinvigorate Critical Marketing. In this work, I am curious about the attention which has been granted to Bauman’s work in Marketing Theory and Consumer Culture Theory (CCT). I am also curious as to the general neglect and treatment of his work within Marketing as a field of knowledge. Believing that his scholarship offers a timely moment to rethink Consumer culture, I will aim to review the key ideas of Bauman along with a review of how his work has been used in Marketing circles. What can Critical Marketers learn from his works becomes a key idea driving forward our notion of liquid times and how we understand vulnerability, consumerism and the emergent structures of late-modern capitalism? What would a turn to the work of Bauman do for Marketing theory? How might it move forward Critical Marketing? How might it impact how we understand the work of Marketing? What key language, what key questions might emerge, equally how might his work inspire new ways of thinking? My goal is to capture the spirit of Bauman’s thinking, to explain its radical roots as I will argue that it is the critical edge and largely gloomy and pessimistic prognosis that he offers that has been subsequently overlooked and generally downplayed when his work has been utilized by consumer researchers.