Explore the view that a consumer society produces both winners and losers. Who are the winners in a consumer society? Who and what make a percentage of our society fall in the category of losers? Is consumerism the one and only game in town? In this essay we shall concentrate on the view that we are shaped more and more by the choices we make in terms of consumption of goods - essential or luxuries - and the services that provide the means to acquire the above mentioned goods. It seems that, in last few decades, we have started to be defined by our purchasing power and the peer-pressure resulting from that. It is John Allen's contention (2014, p125) that our main social drive nowadays is to consume as a means to express our identity to ourselves …show more content…
The end result is that the winners determine the social aspects of modern life quite often at the expense of those placed lower in the consumerist pecking order. It appears that, in our modern society, fortune favours the well-offs. One way to better understand the above concept is to look at the views expressed by Bauman (1988) whereby, for the sake of the argument, he divides modern society into "seduced" and "repressed" individuals. He argues that the above categories are defined by "consumer freedom" as opposed to political freedom based on voting, freedom of assembly etc. Consumer freedom arises in a society where the individual or groups of individuals - the "seduced" - have the ability to purchase a "life-style" that includes necessary goods as well as luxury ones; that …show more content…
The campaigners also contend that, although the big four provide affordable goods, they achieve that by externalising the costs through low wages for UK and overseas suppliers thus increasing the poverty lines. In recent years, the anti-supermarket campaigners have also highlighted the undue influence the supermarkets have on the city planners and politicians through their well funded lobbies, resulting in gentrification and poor urban planning. According to sociologist Dennis Wong (1997) the above two opposing views could also be described in terms of "positive-sum game" for the supermarket lobby and "zero-sum game" for the anti-supermarket camp. Although in both games we find winners and losers, in the positive-sum game the outlook is that all those involved in the process benefit somewhat by the increased consumer choice and instantaneous availability of goods. According to Wong (1997) the "zero-sum game" proponents argue that if we look at the supermarket as a winner and the corner shop owner as a loser their sum is zero; in other words, where the supermarkets gain by cornering the shoppers options, the little trader on high-street will face the constant prospect of closure and the landscape will start to resemble a giant retail