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A review by edmondduong
The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures by Jean Baudrillard
4.75
Despite its considerably lower popularity among Baudrillard's works, Consumer Society is incredibly insightful in revealing the inner mechanisms of the current cultures and societies we live in. After its publishing in 1970, the ideas outlined by Baudrillard are surprisingly (or unsurprisingly?) not common knowledge despite its prescience about the way the world advances. Of course, Baudrillard continues to flesh out these ideas, culminating in his later works that focus more on the impacts of the pervasive impact of the consumer society on media and culture, while this book talks more about the material. However, seeing the evolution of his ideas as they come to fruition gives you insight into his thought processes.
Split into three parts, I feel that the first two parts, The Formal Liturgy of the Object, and The Theory of Consumption outshine the third, expressing more cogent ideas that are more than just baseless conjectures. In Part III, a few chapters are worth highlighting, The Drama of Leisure or the Impossibility of Wasting One's Time, The Mystique of Solicitude, and Anomie in the Affluent Society.
Being a book written in 1970 Paris, Baudrillard references things such as the Parisian drugstore that is very hard to be envisioned when you're not in the context. A cursory search on the web yields nought either. Yet, despite such obstacles, this book is worth trudging through. The Consumer Society has an advantage over his later works, being much more accessible to the public. The book flows much more smoothly, with the way the ideas being lined out being very logical and smooth. A general picture of this book can be easily formed by a reader who is perhaps less attuned to reading works regarding sociology. Its modernist structure (as opposed to post-modernist) allows one to grasp the ideas without having to re-read the book over again, especially if the person is not used to reading post-modern works. This is a book that is simply worth a read if you are interested in the idea of consumption and sociology.
Split into three parts, I feel that the first two parts, The Formal Liturgy of the Object, and The Theory of Consumption outshine the third, expressing more cogent ideas that are more than just baseless conjectures. In Part III, a few chapters are worth highlighting, The Drama of Leisure or the Impossibility of Wasting One's Time, The Mystique of Solicitude, and Anomie in the Affluent Society.
Being a book written in 1970 Paris, Baudrillard references things such as the Parisian drugstore that is very hard to be envisioned when you're not in the context. A cursory search on the web yields nought either. Yet, despite such obstacles, this book is worth trudging through. The Consumer Society has an advantage over his later works, being much more accessible to the public. The book flows much more smoothly, with the way the ideas being lined out being very logical and smooth. A general picture of this book can be easily formed by a reader who is perhaps less attuned to reading works regarding sociology. Its modernist structure (as opposed to post-modernist) allows one to grasp the ideas without having to re-read the book over again, especially if the person is not used to reading post-modern works. This is a book that is simply worth a read if you are interested in the idea of consumption and sociology.