Ordinary Consumption

Ordinary consumption refers to mundane, quotidian, and routinized forms of consumption and to the theoretical and academic approaches, which pay these forms of consumption serious attention. As such, this term is in fact a millennial manifesto, calling for a radical reorientation of cultural studies of consumption.

The constitution of consumption as a proper focus for academic inquiry was inseparable from the broader cultural turn in the humanities and social sciences through the 1980s and 1990s. Through insights generated in cultural studies, the positive potential of the processes of consumption, the opportunities offered by the market to consumers were increasingly recognized. Rather than a dupe of capitalism and the market, the consumer became understood as a self-reflexive, creative, active agent. While the study of consumption through the ...