Needs and Wants

A need is defined as a circumstance in which something is necessary, a thing that is wanted or required. Want refers to scarcity, the state of being absent, or a desire for something necessary to life. The concepts of need and want are present in social sciences literature since its earlier stages. Central [Page 1030]to the depiction and evaluation of production and consumption systems and activities, they are also significant for the discussion and characterization of broader topics, ranging from the distinctive nature of modern capitalism and the problems of social cohesion and inequality it generated to matters of human agency, particularly in the context of the new social order termed the consumer society. Because of the vastness of the theoretical debates and the multiplicity of approaches it generated, needs/wants can be addressed via diverse disciplinary and theoretical perspectives and lines of inquiry. Since an overall presentation would be impossible to accomplish here, this entry privileges the anthropological and sociological debates regarding the relationships between subjects and objects in the context of mass-consumption societies. The entry is structured in four segments, all of them corresponding to main lines of discussion concerning the relevance of the concept(s) to the study of contemporary consumer culture.

Sociologist Don Slater is responsible for one of the most productive contemporary works in this matter. Slater introduces the idea that the centrality of the concept of need in the context of social sciences resides in the fact that consumer culture should be understood as a particular historical arrangement for producing and mediating human needs, and therefore, its evaluation depends on its performance, or its ability to respond to them. However, since needs are defined by people, to assess the performance of consumer culture to react positively to people's needs, it is first necessary to collectively identify what is needed and/or wanted by each society. This assumption links the social definition of needs to the question of how people should live their lives, placing consumption at the heart of the political debate. It articulates, as Slater states, visions of “the good life.” To say that something is needed means claiming the allocation of a certain amount of resources to the production and reproduction of a modality of life, which embodies particular values. Moreover, people tend to satisfy their needs through commodities, that is, things acquired in the market, which contributes to the enhancement of the gap between their roles as producers and consumers. This “secondhand” relationship with contemporary material culture raises issues directly related to consumer agency that, as sociologist Roberta Sassatelli stresses, concentrate in the rationalities that guide consumer behavior. Thus, besides being central to the discussion of how people should live, the concept of need is also pivotal to the discussion of how people make sense of their actions as consumers.