Th e USA was late to develop the sociology of consumption. Th e analysis of consumption was more inspired by economic psychology (e.g. Scitovsky 1976 ) than cultural studies. It remains more concerned with shopping, marketing and advertising than with other aspects of consumption, and is generally much less critical of contemporary consumption than its European counterparts. Th is transpired because of a distinctive accom- modation with economics, a better developed academic discipline of consumer behaviour, a less developed political tradition of welfare pro- vision, and a greater normative acceptance of the market mechanism.
Americans were much less critical of capitalism, and had a much more benign public and intellectual appreciation of mass consumption (Cohen 2003 ; Lebergott 1993 ). As a result, social research was conducted pri- marily in relation to marketing and business—spawning the tradition of consumer behaviour (Belk 1995b ), an applied discipline whose point of reference was not mainstream sociology or anthropology.
Consumption has had low visibility and priority within sociology in the USA. In the context of international scholarship, where the USA continues to play a primary role in delivering and legitimating sociologi- cal research, the absence of an institutional niche for the subdiscipline of consumption has hindered progress. Th at is not to say that there are not major sociological contributions from the USA but, as Zelizer ( 2005a ) noted in one of the relatively few general reviews of research in the area, they have arisen as by-products of other concerns:
Within North American sociology we fi nd extensive consumption studies, but they remain remarkably fragmented, with various specialists taking them up as part of other inquiries (see e.g. Gottdiener 2000 ). Various dimensions of consumption have become mainly the province of specialists
in family, class, gender, childhood, ethnicity, race, religion, community, the arts, and popular culture. (Zelizer 2005a : 335)
She continued by listing a number of excellent and infl uential socio- logical studies published in the USA in the last two decades of the twen- tieth century 2 but concluded that sociological research on consumption
‘remains segmented both within sociology and in terms of connections with consumption studies outside of sociology’ (ibid.: 335). Th ree points are worth making. One is that this is a view of the trajectory of research in the USA. Th e situation was diff erent in European sociology, some of the reasons for which will be addressed below. Second, Zelizer correctly points to a problematic lack of communication between sociology and other disciplines, suggesting that sociology may fi nd it diffi cult to inte- grate its approach to the subject matter of a highly interdisciplinary fi eld of research. Th ird, although Zelizer sounds notes of regret that the sociol- ogy of consumption is poorly integrated in the USA, it is possible that this may, even if inadvertently, be a blessing in disguise. One issue worthy of debate is whether consumption can be defi ned and addressed in a manner which would consolidate a dedicated subdiscipline. Perhaps leav- ing the topic to specialists in areas like family, class, gender and popular culture might be the optimal solution.
A sustained programme of research might have emerged in the later 1970s when Nicosia and Mayer ( 1976 : 66) proposed a programme for a sociology of consumption, admittedly from within consumer research, which would ‘focus on society rather than on the individual consumer (or types of consumer)’. An essentially structural-functionalist project, con- cerned primarily with norms of consumption and their derivation from cultural values, it was a creature of its time. Nevertheless, it distinguished buying, use and disposal as elements of the ‘institutional arrangements of consumption activities in affl uent societies’ and sought to explain the
‘social organization’ of such activities.
Mayer’s blandishments had apparently very little eff ect either on the consumer behaviour tradition or on sociology in the USA. America has
2 Th e list included Cook ( 2000 ), Halle ( 1993 ), Mukerji ( 1983 ), Schudson ( 1984 ), Wuthnow ( 1996 ), Zukin ( 1991 ).
had relatively little use for the idea of a sociology of consumption to judge by citations of books and articles which employ it as a keyword to identify their subject matter. Th e American Sociological Association (ASA) only very belatedly, in 2012, set up a section called ‘Consumers and Consumption’ to give explicit focus to the subject area. Th e European Sociological Association, by contrast, inaugurated a research network, ‘RN05 Sociology of Consumption’, in 1993, its second year of existence, and the British Sociological Association formed a study group in the 1990s, although it subsequently lapsed. George Ritzer advo- cated more explicit attention within the ASA to consumption and pub- lished two books on the topic ( 1999 , 2001 ), which might have been expected to have some infl uence in the light of the enormous success of his McDonaldization of Society ( 1993 ). In 2001 he also became found- ing joint editor of the successful Journal of Consumer Culture , the main- stay discipline of which has been sociology. Yet this seemingly failed to capture the sociological imagination in the USA. For example, the only review of the area appearing in the Annual Review of Sociology before 2015 was published in 2004. In that article Sharon Zukin and Jennifer Smith Maguire ( 2004 ), like Zelizer, mostly drew evidence from historical and institutional rather than fi eldwork-based studies.
It is interesting to speculate on the reasons for the tardy development of the sociology of consumption in the USA. It may partly be because of the prior success of consumer behaviour as a fi eld of research. Th e Journal of Consumer Research publishes material deriving from several disciplines but has included a signifi cant amount of recognisably high-quality socio- logical work (e.g. Holt 1997a ; Sandikci and Ger 2010 ; Th ompson 1996 ; Th ompson and Tambyah 1999 ; Ustuner and Holt 2010 ). Such work has latterly been strategically grouped under the label of Consumer Culture Th eory (CCT) (Arnould and Th ompson 2005 , 2007 , refl ect on the poli- tics of promoting a new school of theory). CCT probably owes more to anthropology than sociology, and fi nds its shared focus in cues taken from the cultural turn and a commitment to qualitative research methods, which distinguished it primarily from others in the fi eld of market research.
It appears an outpost of the fi eld of consumer research whose mainstream is overwhelmingly dominated by economic modelling and experimental psychology. Th is body of work has seen little reciprocal infl uence with the
major sociological journals, which themselves have published few articles about consumption. Other disciplines may also have squeezed the space for sociological projects. Much pioneering work was done under the aus- pices of economics and, from the 1980s, anthropology and history.
Th ere are also probably some wider contextual reasons, which come to light when comparison is made with developments in Europe. Th e USA was generally more tolerant of capitalism and free markets, critical political economy was initially much less prevalent, and macro-sociology less chal- lenged by neo-Marxism. In Europe economistic explanations were almost universal, by which I mean consumption was accorded very little autonomy, being deemed the corollary of arrangements for production and provision.