Consumed in Theory: Alternative Perspectives on the Economics of Consumption
In many disciplines, the study of consumption has become a dynamic, changing field. A new interdisciplinary area of research on consumption has emerged in the last 10-15 years, drawing contributions and participants from sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, literature, and marketing-even, on occasion, from economics. (See Miller [1995] for a collection of bibliographic essays and surveys from each of the relevant disciplines.) Yet despite the central role that consumption plays in economic theory, economics has been one of the least important contributors to the new wave of research-and one of the disciplines least affected by new approaches to consumption of any variety. A recent review of innovations in neoclassical economic theory simply asserts that "the microeconomic theory of consumer choice under conditions of certainty is well developed, and has not been the subject of any significant advances in recent years" [Darnell 1992]. Economists' lack of interest in new approaches to consumption largely reflects the rigidity of the conventional economic theory of consumer behavior. That theory, of course, assumes that consumers come to the market with well-defined, insatiable desires for private goods and services; those desires are not affected by social interactions, culture, economic institutions, or the consumption choices or well-being of others. Only prices, incomes, and personal tastes affect consumption-and since tastes are exogenous to neoclassical economics, there is little point in talking about anything but prices and incomes. The correspondence between this theory and the visible facts of economic life is tenuous at best. If there have been no recent advances in the microeconomics of consumer behavior, it is not because of a lack of room for improvement. Nor has