The sociology of consumption has concentrated unduly on the more spectacular and visual aspects of contemporary consumer behaviour, thereby constructing an unbalanced and misleading view. This collection emphasises ordinary rather than extraordinary items, routine and repetitive behaviour rather than conscious decision-making. It studies practical contexts of use rather than decisions to purchase and analyses collective identification rather than personal identity. Each essay argues one or more of these points, for the most part using new empirical material from several different national contexts. The topics analysed include shopping in Taiwan, second-home ownership in France, environmental considerations concerning food choice in Denmark, the take up of new domestic technologies in Finland and kitchen design in England. Key concepts like tradition, routine and habit are clarified and new conceptual distinctions are made, with the book defending theoretical approaches deriving from Simmel, Weber, Durkheim and Bourdieu. Ordinary Consumption promotes a distinctive approach to the understanding of the central practices of consumer society, it is a book with a controversial message, one which will be a source of debate about the appropriate agenda for future research.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Focusing on ethical consumers, their behaviour, discourses and narratives as well as the social and political contexts in which they operate, this text provides a summary of the manner and effectiveness of their actions.

This book looks at the recent emergence of "new ordinary consumption," in urban China and defines new ordinary consumption as a consumer practice in which people routinely integrate products and items, traditionally reserved for special occasions, into their daily lives, to accentuate their own well-being. The book, through the case study on the adoption of cut flowers and upscaling non-floral goods, provides insights on how deal proneness and high price sensitivity pose challenges to many market retailers. It also proposes how to go about resolving these challenging issues in retail through the alteration of perceived reasons to consume. The author also examined social media marketing narrative that two direct-to-consumer floral goods sellers used, to guide consumers away from the social and cultural baggage of consumption, thereby giving more consideration to products reshaping consumers’ motivation, and driving the purchase. Heeding the findings of floral startups that awakened consumers’ aspirations to redefine their everyday personal lives, and making such aspirations a profitable business, this interesting case study suggests that it is time to revisit the appeal of conspicuous consumption in the present-day Chinese markets. Anyone interested to learn more about the Chinese consumers and their novel consumption habits would find the book a useful reference.

This text investigates the mutual and dynamic relationship between urban development and consumption. It uses case studies and illustrations from North America, Europe and Asia.

In public debates, communication campaigns and public policies, it is increasingly common to attribute to consumers and their agency an ability to help solve a broad array of societal problems. This tendency is particularly clear in the field of food consumption, owing to the fact that food is both materially and symbolically central for consumers in everyday life as well as for large scale institutionalized dynamics. In order to shed light on the challenges facing food consumption, this volume takes an innovative theoretical approach, presenting four empirical Danish case studies which are compared with other analyses drawn from the wider international context. Consumption Challenged will appeal not only to sociologists of consumption, risk and the environment, but also to policy makers and researchers in the fields of geography, communication, media, governance and social psychology.

How much is acceptable to consume? What is appropriate to consume and which goods fall into the disapproved category? Answers to these questions vary widely across time and space. This book examines the sources of this variation by providing an account of how everyday consumption norms develop, why they differ and why they change.