Culture-Ideology of Consumerism

The culture-ideology of consumerism is a central concept in the theory of capitalist globalization proposed by Leslie Sklair. It refers to the transformation of above-subsistence consumption from a sectional preference of the rich to a globalizing phenomenon. Its emergence can be explained in terms of two central factors, factors that are historically unprecedented. [Page 408]First, capitalism entered a qualitatively new globalizing phase in the 1950s. As the electronic revolution got under way, significant changes began to occur in the productivity of capitalist factories, systems of extraction and processing of raw materials, product design, marketing, and distribution of goods and services. This golden age of capitalism, driven largely by new types of globally integrated transnational corporations and organized politically by an embryonic transnational capitalist class, took ...