Verso un'ecologia del consumo

(TOWARDS AN ECOLOGY OF CONSUMPTION)

di Paolo Dell'Aquila

Franco Angeli, Milano, 1997

In my book I analyse the shift towards post-modern culture as a phenomenon of mass aestheticization within the cultural system (see S. Lash, M. Featherstone, and others), where the aesthetic sphere of values assumes the predominance over the science and moral.

One of the consequences of this process is that consumer goods become more and more a system of symbolic significances that carries cultural categories (Sahlins, Douglas). The essay aims at studying how meanings are transferred from culturally constituted world to individual consumer and groups (see McCracken).

Advertising and fashions are the potential method of meaning transfer from world to goods and people, but the consumer can also create new symbolic meanings opposite to those conveyed by cultural system (such as in subcultures).So in the 80s consumption becomes a means for the production of identity and for the consolidation of group images. At the same time, mass media information leads to a loss of concrete reality, such as in television culture with its floating mass of signs and images.

If, during the 80s, in Italy the search for the aesthetical appearance made subjectivity as an "homeless mind", in today's society the search for a widespread social ethics tends to re-emerge. We can see an "ecology of communication", which consists of a decrease in social rhythms and of a dimishing importance in advertisement and "Star Strategy" (Seguela).

In this way, a new imaginery emerges for the integration of seduction and rationality in search for quality and functionality. The ecology of consumption tends to conjugate the capacity of the aesthetic to fascinate with the self control, the volontary tendency of appearance with the rediscovery of ethical and social values.The self creates projects of consumption which reduces the heterogeneity of purchases and choises that are in contrast with each other, in order to re-establish a balance with the natural and social ecosystem.

Preface by Gianfranco Morra

Introduction

1. Mass aestheticization

1. Cultural differentiation, modernity and post-modernity
2. The two phases of post-modern
3. Art and good
4. Social goods and relations

1. Self-reference and post-materialism
2. Ecology of communication and neo-materialism
3. From status symbol to style symbol
4. Advertisement and production of significances
5. Life styles and consumptions

1. The symbolic exchange
2. Consumption and production of significances
3. Innatural styles

1. Mass snobbery
2. Fashion between imitation and differentiation
3. The virtuous hedonist.

Bibliographic references

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