The Perilous Freedoms of Consumption: Toward a Theory of the Conduct of Consumer Conduct

Abstract

This paper considers recent work on “governmentality” for the manner in which researchers in this area have regarded the practice of consumption. Governmentality theorists (Rose, DuGay, Dean) have examined the specific cultural and economic conditions of neo‐liberalism, and concluded that practices of governmentality are aimed at producing an “enterprising self” – a mode of self regulation centered on autonomy, flexibility and instrumentality in professional and institutional life. However, research in governmentality studies has tended to underemphasize the practices of the consumer, or reduced them to a dependent set of practices to that of professional, productive life. Through an examination of consumption as a realm of carnivalesque and liminal self transformation, the thesis on governmentality is adapted to the unique conditions of consumption. Moreover, the distinctions between production and consumption, once relegated to stable institutional practices, are argued to fall under the responsibilities of individuals, who become talented at marking the boundaries of consumption as a realm of immersion, ludic behavior and expressive play. The necessity to develop these skills becomes all the more urgent as consumption becomes increasingly powerful in undermining the economizing logics of everyday life (partly as a result of increasing appeals to unplanned purchases, partly through the extension of consumer credit). To confront these powerful influences, new skills are required for the fixing of these boundaries. The paper concludes with a comment on the case of the “compulsive shopper”, whose techniques of self restraint are inscribed through the governmentality of consumption.