Liquid Consumption

Abstract This article proposes a theoretical framework for examining recent anti-consumerist practices. It argues that such practices are important in terms not only of the political sentiments and collective concerns they mobilize, for the broader life-projects, or identity constructions they entail. Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman's thesis on 'liquid modernity', a theory of 'liquid consumption' is used to argue that many anti-consumerist practices and sensibilities shape personal identities by appealing to a decommodified sociability, yet this sociability is more often the rhetorical production of anti-consumerist discourses, and hence not capable of reinforcing the identity projects they aim to consolidate. Examples of this effect are described in the discourses of Feng Shui and the Slow Food movement. Keywords: anti-consumptionFeng Shuiliquid consumptionliquid modernitySlow Food Notes 1. I will not consider here the many things Bauman has written on the function of consumption in facilitating new forms of social consensus, as illustrated in his provocative analysis of the turn from repression to seduction, nor his highly relevant treatment of consumption in processes of social stratification, as described in his analysis of 'flawed consumers' (see Bauman 1987 Bauman, Z. 1987. Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Postmodernity and Intellectuals, Cambridge: Polity Press. Google Scholar, p. 167, 1998 Bauman , Z. 1998 Work, Consumerism and the New Poor , Maidenhead , Open University Press . Google Scholar, pp. 38–40).