Towards a Useful Multigenic Theory of Consumption

Panel: Panel 3: Dynamics of Consumption (social and cultural perspectives, actors and their interactions)

Author:
Richard Wilk, Anthropology Department, Indiana University

Abstract

Consumtion is still a poorly understood phenomenon, and the social, cultural, economic and psychological variables that determine consumption have not been clearly identified. Effective policymaking and prediction is impossible without knowing what determines and changes consumption levels.

This paper argues that the lack of a usual theory of consumption results directly from paradigmatic incoherence within and between the social sciences. Theorists have championed single variables, or have embeddeb their analysis within larger theoretical constructs like utility, modernity, individuation, or romanticism. The consequence is partial models that cannot be empirically tested, cannot be reconcild, or even brought into productive engagement or dialogue because they are based on incommernsurate models ofhuman nature, recent history, and political economy.

Rather than argue for one fundamental cause, this author reviews a number of alternative theoretical approaches, and then proposes a heterodox "multigenic" theory based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Such a theory accepts multiple types of causes of consumption, operating at different analytical levels, from the individual, thsough households, community, and ultimately to nations and other groups. Factors impelling and restraining consumption can therefoer be balanced or unbalanced by relatively minor changes in a large number of interrelated variables.