Consumer Culture and the Crisis of Identity

Abstract

Consumer culture has played an important role in a process of change away from many traditional attitudes. It appears among various traits of contemporary society and has fostered a crisis of identity among some people today. To understand the crisis of identity, we must examine it in the cultural context in which it occurs. Along with the improvement in living standards that people today have come to enjoy, there has been an abandonment of a consumption style common to past generations in favor of a new, more open consumption style. The new style is more individualized than the older style and it has led to changes in methods and purposes of consumption. With the restless capital in the economic expansion since the cold war, consumer culture has followed the tide of economic globalization. Consumer culture has become pervasive and has led at least one commentator to exclaim: ‘‘The whole ideology of consumption is there to persuade us that we have entered a new era and that a decisive human ‘Revolution’ separates the painful, heroic Age of Production from the euphoric Age of Consumption.’’ In China where thrift has long been stressed and an agricultural social tradition has a long history, consumer culture has, over three decades, greatly altered the bearing and behavior of people in urban areas especially. Among people in some social classes, consumer behavior actuated by contemporary consumer culture has come to dominate their daily lives as they scramble to keep with current fashions.