Zygmunt Bauman argues that modern society is organized around consumption rather than production. Individual freedom and identity are based on consuming goods and services through the consumer market. As a result, consumption is privatized and commodified, fueling ever-increasing consumption. People define themselves and each other by what they consume rather than what they produce.

1. Zygmunt Bauman
Science, Consumption & Identity

2. Bauman & Capitalism
• Looking at … Zygmunt Bauman’s analysis of
contemporary ‘consumer society’
– As opposed to ‘production-based’ social
organisation

3. Social Class
(Production)

4. Consuming – rubbish …
• Bauman argues that contemporary society is organised
around the principles of consumption, rather than
‘production’.
• ‘Freedoms’ in a consumer society, tend to understood as:
– “the freedom to choose how to satisfy individual desires” (via
the medium of the consumer market)
• As a consequence, individual ‘freedom’ has become
privatised and commodified – a development which in turn
fuel’s increasing consumption
• Identity itself becomes based on the process and products
of consumption

5. What defines who ‘we’ are?

7. Seduced
Repressed
• Zygmunt
Bauman

8. Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous
Consumption