Prosumption

Prosumption, according to George Ritzer and Nathan Jurgenson, involves both production and consumption rather than focusing on either one (production) or the other (consumption). Prosumption involves the blurring of production and consumption. The prosumer is one who consumes that which one produces and/or produces that which one consumes.

The term can be credited to Alvin Toffler, who discusses “the rise of the prosumer” (1980, 265) in his book The Third Wave. Recently, the term and the ideas associated with it (such as “cocreation,” “peer-production,” “wikinomics”) have received much attention. While prosumption is a contemporary term, it would be a mistake to view the blurring of production and consumption as something that has occurred only recently. For example, peasants on preindustrial farms often produced that which they ...