Consumption and identity: The cultural politics of shopping

Abstract Anthropologists such as Daniel Miller and Mary Douglas have suggested that modern identities are constituted through the symbolic world of consumption, with its increasingly mediated relationship to the material world, as much as they are shaped directly by the social relations of production. This has led many on the Left to be suspicious of much current work on consumption, with its apparent celebration of highly individualized ‘lifestyle’ choices, the exercise of ‘consumer sovereignty’ and the rise of so‐called ‘identity politics’. Drawing on recent empirical research on consumption in north London, this paper suggests that these suspicions may be over‐drawn. Identity need not be approached in such an individualistic manner and is most often articulated in relational terms (through notions of the family and associated expectations about gender and sexuality, or through racialized understandings of social change at varying scales from the neighbourhood to the nation). The research confirms that the majority of everyday consumption practices are still performed as routine and mundane work (mostly undertaken by women) with very limited scope for more recreational forms of ‘lifestyle shopping’. Using evidence from survey, focus group and ethnographic research, the paper examines the relationship between consumption and identity in these more relational and socially contextualized terms. It examines the transformation of the material world into the commodity form and associated fears about the increasing artificiality of our relationships with nature and with other people. It explores the domestic context of family shopping’ and the distinction between the home as a world of cleanliness and order contrasted with the street as a site of danger, dirt and pollution. It examines the extent to which such ideas are being institutionalized through the privatization of public space, where consumers are subject to increasing surveillance and control in order to reduce the chance of unplanned encounters with various (racialized or working class) Others. These findings suggest new kinds of political engagements as well as new ways of thinking about the relationship between consumption and identity.