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.