Consumption

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches consumption through Michel Clouscard, whose thesis he restates consistently from 2012 to 2021: there is no "consumer society," but classes that consume12. In his view, the single term masks heterogeneous realities. Berlusconi's champagne and the miner's first colour television cannot be named with the same word3. Following Clouscard, he distinguishes collective facilities, household capital goods, which serve production, and a playful, libidinal and marginal consumption reserved for a privileged elite45. He draws a consequence from this: strictly speaking, people consume too much of this and not enough of that, and the majority does not consume enough6. Consumption thus becomes a criterion for analysing social classes. Clouscard, he stresses, studies classes through consumption as much as through production2.

1. 1Radio Galère - Michel Clouscard - 16 Jul 2012 · 21:10
2. 2EVERYTHING'S ALLOWED, BUT NOTHING IS POSSIBLE! Michel Clouscard, May 68, French Theory & Capitalism14 Jul 2021 · 39:57
3. 3C comme Consommation17 Dec 2014 · 4:04
4. 4Au bistrot avec Pagani : partie 118 Jun 2016 · 26:52
5. 5EVERYTHING'S ALLOWED, BUT NOTHING IS POSSIBLE! Michel Clouscard, May 68, French Theory & Capitalism14 Jul 2021 · 42:25
6. 6C comme Consommation17 Dec 2014 · 8:57

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.