Consumers and consumption

This chapter reflects on the tension in the sociology of consumption between a focus on “consumers” on the one hand and “consumption” on the other. In the next section I explore the birth of the figure of “the consumer” and following that, the notion of “consumer society”. I then briefly explore the genealogy of the figure of the consumer itself. The development of the sociology of consumption is then addressed from “the cultural turn” in the 1980s to “the practice turn” from the millennium onwards. That development has led to a decentring of consumers as a focus of study, and at the same time to a concern with the societal effects of the various incarnations of the figure of “the consumer” within the institutional field of consumption. The chapter then briefly reflects on more recent developments in the sociology of consumption and goes on to ask, if the consumer has been decentred within the sociology of consumption by “consumption”—understood as an institutional field (Zukin and Smith Maguire, 2004), or field of social practices (Warde, 2005, 2017)—is there a place for the sociological study of consumers? In the penultimate section I offer four emerging agendas that I suggest have potential for the ongoing relevance of the field for issues of macro-social change. Finally, I conclude with some reflections on the need for a critical sociology of consumers and consumption.