Building Identities in a Mass-Communication World: A Commentary on Steven Miles's 'The Cultural Capital of Consumption'

Abstract

The process of identity formation is approached from the multilevel perspective of symbiotic, distributed units (dyads, groups of consciousness, communities) that follows from a sociocultural interpretation of the issue of identity. According to that view, objects in general, and consumer goods in particular, are seen as psychological tools that are directed towards oneself as much as towards others. The process of socio-economic change that has replaced the socially mediated identification of goods by an instrumental and visual identification seems to be extending to personal identities. The effect of consumption and mass communication processes would seem to point to the fragmentation of the different units into separate and even confronting identities, as well as to the dramatization of objects in the symbolic narratives of postmodern identities constructed through advertising.