have used two words that are central to this dissertation as if they were unproblematic even though one, consumerism, is extraordinarily vague and the other, identity, is surely one of the more contested words in the English language. Consumerism is a strange ism. Websters New World Dictionary lists seven meanings of this suffix. The first would make of the word in question the act, practice, or result of consumers. The second yields the condition of being a consumer. Other meanings include: action, conduct, or qualities characteristic of consumers; the doctrine, school, theory, or principle of consumers; or an instance, example, or peculiarity of consumers. All of these have something to recommend themselves, but none seem quite satisfactory. Consumerism seems to refer to something more than the practices, condition, conduct, or peculiarities of consumers, and consumers do not seem to have any explicit allegiance to a common doctrine or theory that unifies them. Some of these definitions might be improved if the noun consumers was replaced by consumption. Perhaps the seventh meaning of the suffix produces the best definition with this new formulation: an abnormal condition caused by consumption, but this is closer to the conclusion the dissertation seeks to reach than a neutral term with which it must begin. The same dictionary offers no help with the word itself, offering three inadequate definitions. Two of these refer to areas that are too limited: political goals (the protection of consumers) and economic theory (that the endless expansion of consumption is sound economically); the other is too broad: the consumption of goods and services.1 For the purposes of this dissertation, consumerism refers to an ethos supporting the notion that consumption of greater quantities and more expensive goods leads to 1Websters New World Dictionary (1988), s.v. -ism and consumerism.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:04:34 +0000
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