Key Points

  • Consumerism is the central feature of contemporary capitalism, and more to the point, it is a belief system, an ‘ism’.
     
  • The production and consumption of stuff are inextricably linked, that almost everything has its price.
     
  • Erecting warehouses of stuff locks into life-style choices, that shopping becomes an end in itself rather than simply a means to keeping ourselves provisioned.
     
  • Stuff is ‘us’ in the first place, rather than being an externalisation of our needs and desires.
     
  • Our consumption if stuff has direct implications for people around the world, that our consumption practices have deep implications for people’s ways of life.