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The World of Goods
Mary Douglas,Baron Isherwood +1 more
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TLDR
The World of Goods as mentioned in this paper is a classic of economic anthropology whose insights remain compelling and urgent, arguing that poverty is caused as much by the erosion of local communities and networks as it is by lack of possessions and contrast small-scale with large-scale consumption in the household.Abstract:
It is well-understood that the consumption of goods plays an important, symbolic role in the way human beings communicate, create identity, and establish relationships. What is less well-known is that the pattern of their flow shapes society in fundamental ways. In this book the renowned anthropologist Mary Douglas and economist Baron Isherwood overturn arguments about consumption that rely on received economic and psychological explanations. They ask new questions about why people save, why they spend, what they buy, and why they sometimes-but not always-make fine distinctions about quality.
Instead of regarding consumption as a private means of satisfying one’s preferences, they show how goods are a vital information system, used by human beings to fulfill their intentions towards one another. They also consider the implications of the social role of goods for a new vision for social policy, arguing that poverty is caused as much by the erosion of local communities and networks as it is by lack of possessions, and contrast small-scale with large-scale consumption in the household.
A radical rethinking of consumerism, inequality and social capital, The World of Goods is a classic of economic anthropology whose insights remain compelling and urgent.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Richard Wilk.
"Forget that commodities are good for eating, clothing, and shelter; forget their usefulness and try instead the idea that commodities are good for thinking." – Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwoodread more
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Immateriality of Material Practices in Institutional Logics
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the 16 most central theoretical and empirical works on institutional logics with the aim of exploring how the material dimension of logics has been conceptualized and researched, and suggest that materiality has been interpreted primarily as practices and structures, and rarely as physical objects.
Journal ArticleDOI
An exploratory study of consumers’ perceptions: What are affordable luxuries?
TL;DR: This paper conducted an exploratory investigation to determine whether millennial consumers differentiate between the terms “luxury” and “affordable luxury,” which products they perceive to be affordable luxuries, and the price range they are willing to pay for affordable luxury items.
Journal ArticleDOI
Review Essay Cultural Exchange: New Developments in the Anthropology of Commodities
TL;DR: The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986) is a milestone in the development of a new, culturally informed economic anthropology as discussed by the authors, which can be seen as the beginning of a fruitful integration of cultural and economic analysis.
Posted Content
The Epistemic Consumption Object and Postsocial Consumption: Expanding Consumer-Object Theory in Consumer Research
Detlev Zwick,Nikhilesh Dholakia +1 more
TL;DR: The concept of the epistemic consumption object brings the “object” directly into theorizations of consumer‐object relations, extending current theories of relationship, product involvement, and consumption communities.
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VIRTUAL CONSUMERISM: Case Habbo Hotel
TL;DR: This article examined the phenomenon from a sociological perspective, aiming to understand how some media representations come to be perceived as virtual commodities, what motivations individuals have for spending money on these commodities, and how the resulting virtual consumerism relates to consumer culture at large.