Consumerism and The Consumer Society

 Consumerism is a social and economic order and ideology that encourages the
acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. Early criticism of
consumerism was in the works of Thorstein Veblen in 1899, which examined the
middle class emerging at the turn of the 20th century, which came to fruition by the
end of the 20th century through the process of globalization

 Consumer society= a society in which people often buy new goods, especially goods
that they do not need, and in which a high value is placed on owning many things

The consumer society emerged in the late seventeenth century and intensified throughout
the eighteenth century. While some claim that change was propelled by the growing middle-
class who embraced new ideas about luxury consumption and the growing importance of
fashion as an arbiter for purchasing rather than necessity, many critics argue that
consumerism was a political and economic necessity for the reproduction of capitalist
competition for markets and profits, while others point to the increasing political strength of
international working class organizations during a rapid increase in technological productivity
and decline in necessary scarcity as a catalyst to develop a consumer culture based on
therapeutic entertainments, home ownership and debt.