The social life of mass and excess consumption

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• institutions and mechanisms at thelevel of social life drive and reproduce patterns ofmass/excess consumption

• Mass and excess consumption permeate social life

• Born into mass consumption societies where excess isomnipresent, where we are surrounded by toys, can-dies, fast food, fast fashion, electronic devices, gamesand all sorts of entertainments

• xperience social confirmationthrough our behaviour as consumers, we learn tolove consumption

• Particular attention is paidto the meso-level of social life lying between the indi-vidual and macro-level institutions.

• The umbrella concept of institution includes bothmaterial and non-material (cognitive) factors

• Institutions structure and stabilizeaction. They constrain and facilitate it, and contributeto organizing it.

• Both material and non-material institu-tions provide stability and predictability to social life

• Institutions shape dominant ways of thinking,feeling and doing.

• apitalism, which is an inherentlydynamic economic institution

• Capitalism is oriented towards con-tinuous growth or capital accumulation. There is moreto this drive to accumulate capital than capitalists’desire for profit.

• The institution of capital-ism is reinforced by other institutions including, criti-cally, the institution of private property and the legalprotection it provides.

• distribution of produced goods isundertaken through market exchange

• continuous industrial/technologicaldevelopment, backed by scientific progress, which hasled to enormous increases in productivity over time

• produce more, new, increasingly differentiated pro-ducts and services which, in turn, results in the inces-sant creation of new‘needs’

• economic geography, includinga constant process of urbanization, which facilitatesproduction, distribution and consumption for themasse

• tandardizedmass consumption with systems of distribution andprovision through, for example, department stores,shopping centres, malls and systems of transportation

• This institutional structure facilitates massaccessibility and availability

• inter-net has created a new revolution in economic geogra-phy with many products only a couple of clicks away

• expansive capitalism needs the support ofan ideology or culture that legitimizes it–a pro-growthdogma.