The Sociology of Consumption: Its Recent Development

This article examines the development of the sociology of consumption. It identifies three periods in its evolution: origins prior to the 1980s; the years between the 1980s and the mid-2000s under the influence of the cultural turn; and the subsequent decade, when new theoretical perspectives and political issues have emerged. Achievements of the second period are reviewed and three areas of fresh and productive recent research are identified: cultural consumption and its intersection with inequality and stratification, sustainable consumption and the organization of everyday life in Western societies, and the politics of consumption. The article concludes with a discussion of possibilities for future research.