Alejandro Nestor Garcia Martinez - Being Human in a Consumer Society

BEING HUMAN IN A CONSUMER SOCIETY

Series Editor: Stjepan G. Mestrovic, Texas A&M University, USA

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both classical and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it. The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts.

Also in the series

The Poetics of Crime:
Understanding and Researching Crime and Deviance Through Creative Sources
Edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen
ISBN 978-1-4094-6995-7

Hegels Phenomenology and Foucaults Genealogy
Evangelia Sembou
ISBN 978-1-4094-4308-7

The Making of a Postsecular Society:
A Durkheimian Approach to Memory, Pluralism and Religion in Turkey
Massimo Rosati
ISBN 978-1-4724-2312-2

Edited by
ALEJANDRO NSTOR GARCA MARTNEZ
University of Navarra, Spain

ASHGATE

Alejandro Nstor Garca Martnez and the contributors 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Alejandro Nstor Garca Martnez has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited
Wey Court East
Union Road
Farnham
Surrey, GU9 7PT
England

Ashgate Publishing Company
110 Cherry Street
Suite 3-1
Burlington, VT 05401-3818
USA

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Being human in a consumer society / [edited] by Alejandro Nstor Garca Martnez.

pages cm. (Classical and contemporary social theory)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-4317-5 (hardback : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-4724-4318-2 (ebook)ISBN 978-1-4724-4319-9 (epub)

1. Consumption (Economics)Social aspectsPhilosophy. 2. ConsumersPhilosophy. 3. EconomicsSociological aspectsPhilosophy. I. Garca Martnez, Alejandro Nstor, 1977

HC79.C6B39 2015

339.47dc23

2014030029

ISBN 9781472443175 (hbk)
ISBN 9781472443182 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781472443199 (ebk-ePUB)

Alejandro Nstor Garca Martnez

Stjepan G. Mestrovic

George Ritzer

Colin Campbell

Pablo Garca-Ruiz

Allison J. Pugh

Karin M. Ekstrm

Talbot Brewer

Efrat Tselon

Roberta Sassatelli

Talbot Brewer is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Virginia and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He specializes in ethics and political philosophy, with a special emphasis on moral psychology and Aristotelian normative ethics. He is the author of numerous articles, including Virtues We Can Share: A Reading of Aristotles Ethics (Ethics 115, 2005), Savoring Time: Desire, Pleasure and Wholehearted Activity (Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6, 2, 2003), Two Kinds of Commitments (And Two Kinds of Social Groups) (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66, 2003), and Maxims and Virtues (The Philosophical Review 3, 2002). He has also authored two books, the most recent of which is The Retrieval of Ethics (2009).

Colin Campbell is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of York. He is the author of half a dozen books and over 100 articles dealing with issues in the sociology of religion, consumerism, cultural change, and sociological theory. He is probably best known as the author of The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (1987, 2005), while his other publications include The Myth of Social Action (1996), The Easternization of the West (2007), and Toward A Sociology of Irreligion (1971), a new edition of which was published in 2013.

Karin M. Ekstrm is Professor (Chair) in Marketing at University of Bors, Sweden. She is the initiator and former director of the Centre for Consumer Science (CFK), an interdisciplinary consumer research center. Her research interests are family consumption, consumer socialization, collecting, consumers relations to artefacts, and the meaning(s) of consumption. She has edited several books most recently Consumer BehaviourA Nordic Perspective (2010) and Beyond the Consumption Bubble with Kay Glans (2011). Recent journal articles include publications in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour, the Journal of Macromarketing, the Journal of Marketing Management and Research in Consumer Behaviour. Her most recent publication is The Discovery of Relations to Artefacts in the Boundless Process of Moving in Coping with Excess; How Organizations, Communities and Individuals Manage Overflows (edited by Barbara Czarniawska and Orvar Lfgren, 2013). She has studied reuse and recycling of clothes and textiles in a research project for the last three years. Her current research projects focus on culinary tourism and market orientation of art museums.

Alejandro Nstor Garca Martnez is Lecturer at the University of Navarra in Sociology, Social Theory, and Theory of Organizations. He also serves as a Research Fellow for the Emotional Culture and Identity project at the Institute for Culture and Society at the same university. He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including Fashion and Social Distinction (2007) and the edition of the monographic issue of Anuario Filosfico on Consumption and Identity (2010).

Pablo Garca-Ruiz is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Zaragoza (Spain), whose PhD in Philosophy (Social Theory) was awarded by the University of Navarra (1992). His research interests are the relationship between consumption projects and self-identity formation, and the role of consumption patterns in the emergence of new forms of citizenship. He is the author of some papers on topics such as Consumption and Identity: A Relational Approach (2010), and Reflexive Consumers: Consumption as a Social Practice (2010). His latest book came out in 2009, entitled