The world of consumption: The material and cultural revisited by Ben Fine (Routledge: London and New York, 2002, 2nd edn, pp. xiv + 313).

✍ Scribed by Luuk van Kempen

• Book ID: 102351559
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 32 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1048

✦ Synopsis

The first edition of The World of Consumption, which appeared almost a decade ago, put forward the 'system of provision' approach to consumption. The basic idea of this approach is that consumption should be studied vertically rather than horizontally, the latter being the rule rather than the exception among scholars of consumption across the social sciences. Instead of applying one single theory to a bundle of disparate goods that are conveniently but unduly lumped together, each commodity and its consumption should be studied separately, because each has a unique system of provision. Each element of the system of provision plays a potentially significant role in the social construction of the commodity, both in its material and cultural aspects.

This second edition of the book is an updated and quite drastically rewritten version of the first edition. The objective of the revision is twofold. First, it aims to take stock of where the system of provision approach stands now. Second, an attempt is made to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of the system of provision approach, which is rooted in the political economy of Marx. In Chapters 3 to 5 it is shown that Marx's analysis of capitalism does not-as is commonly believedpreclude the study of consumption. Rather, Marx's theory of capitalist commodity production is the only appropriate starting point for understanding consumption according to Fine.

Throughout the book the author is at great pains to show that alternative frameworks for consumption are limited, fallacious or otherwise flawed. In Chapter 4 Fine criticizes the postmodernists, who have concentrated on the symbolic relation between the consumer and the consumed in terms of sign value and identity construction, for having gone too far in neglecting production and ignoring the 'economic' altogether. The harshest critique is for mainstream economics however, which has 'alien and absurd postures' (p. xi) and 'takes one simple and single idea, utility maximization, and generalizes it across all commodities simultaneously' (p. 125). More generally, Fine decries the tendency of mainstream economists to colonize terrain traditionally occupied by other social sciences. In Chapter 7 the work of Gary Becker, which is the example par excellence of such 'economics imperialism' is criticized. In addition, two recently popularised concepts that might be used as frameworks for consumer studies, i.e. 'globalisation' and 'consumer society' are dismissed as unsuitable in Chapter 2 and 8 respectively.

Finally, the merits of the system of provision approach are further highlighted when discussing the much-neglected domain of public consumption in Chapter 9 and 10. Public consumption, it is argued, should also be analysed separately by programe (housing, education or health) and by country rather than across the board, for the welfare state does not exist.

When the current state of affairs of the system of provision approach is discussed in Chapter 6, it appears that one of the few studies that have explicitly followed this approach actually deals with consumption in a developing country context. Hansen (2000) traces in her book the system of provision of second-hand clothing from developed countries to a particular developing country, Zambia. Her book provides a good illustration of how a vertical approach to consumption can provide insight in the complex issues surrounding consumption in developing countries. In general however, Fine pays remarkably little attention to consumption in developing countries. Are they not yet part of the world of consumption? In a certain sense, Fine seems to adhere to such a view, when he deplores the strong focus of consumption studies on the world's affluent, which implies ignoring 'those in the Third World for whom consumption remains a matter of life and death-whether through starvation, disease or homelessness ' (p. 155). While this is true for some, it obscures the fact that many poor people in the Third World are exposed to global consumerism and that their indulgence in expensive Western consumer items may be part of the explanation for problems such as malnutrition, poor health, and inadequate housing. If a low-income consumer skips a meal for instance in order to be able to afford a pair of Nike shoes or Calvin Klein jeans, even though these are most probably fakes, the question crops up whether this is against his or her self-interest. Unfortunately, the system of provision approach lacks a welfare analysis, so that it cannot guide us when it comes to such normative questions. As demonstrated by James (2000), who is oddly enough mentioned by Fine as unwittingly providing support for the system of provision approach, a marginal break away from mainstream economics can shed more light on these questions.

Interesting from a development point of view is also the comparison in Chapter 6 of the 'systems of provision' and global commodity chain approach, an increasingly popular tool in development Book Reviews 1131