Liquid consumption: Anti-consumerism and the fetishized de-fetishization of commodities

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.