Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2003, volume 21, pages 341 ^ 357

DOI:10.1068/d353

(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy

Andrew Sayer
Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, England;
e-mail: a.sayer@lancaster.ac.uk
Received 4 November 2001; in revised form 19 September 2002

Abstract. In this paper I attempt to develop understanding of commodification and consumption by

relating ideas from the moral philosophy of Adam Smith and Alasdair MacIntyre to recent research
on consumer culture by Pierre Bourdieu and Daniel Miller. I focus on how commodification affects
how people value things, practices, themselves, and others. It is argued that, although traditional
critiques of consumer culture have often been both elitist and weakly supported empirically, some of
their normative distinctions can be used to illuminate more positive aspects of consumption. In
particular, the distinction between internal and external goods enables us to appreciate that much
consumption is not primarily a form of status seeking but a means to the development of skills,
achievements, commitments, and relationships which have value regardless of whether they bring
participants external rewards. Although Bourdieu's analysis of inequalities and the struggles of the
social field misses this distinction, use of it helps to illuminate how the struggles are for internal
goods as well as for status and power. Finally, by reference to recent work by Miller on altruistic
shopping, I question the common related criticism of consumer culture as individualistic, and
conclude.

Introduction
This paper derives from a wider project on `moral economy', which is concerned with
the moral sentiments and norms that influence economic behaviour and how these are
in turn influenced, compromised, or overridden by economic forces (Sayer, 2000). It
combines both positive and normative thought, on the grounds that their divorce over
the last two centuries has been deeply damaging öyielding, on the one hand, a positive
social science that is fearful of venturing into normative argument and hence has
difficulty understanding the normative sentiments and concepts embedded in practice,
and, on the other, a ghettoisation of normative thought in moral and political philos-
ophy, in which it often has difficulty relating to recognisable social life. The wider
project involves trying to further understanding of economic life by applying concepts
and distinctions from normative moral philosophy which are arguably implicit in lay
practice but sometimes missed by social scientists. In this paper I try to develop the
understanding of commodification and consumption by using ideas from the work of
Adam Smith and Alasdair MacIntyre, in combination with more recent research.
I should perhaps warn that some readers may be surprised that the references to
Smith do not fit with popular views of his work. The neoliberal hi-jacking of Smith as
a one-dimensional advocate of self-interest is increasingly recognised by intellectual
historians as an egregious misrepresentation (Griswold, 1999; Lubasz, 1998; Tabb, 1999;
Weinstein, 2001; Winch, 1978; 1996). For Smith, individuals are social beings who are
always dependent on others and concerned with understanding them; benevolence and
a need for recognition, as well as self-interest, are normal, `natural' dispositions.
Individuals continually monitor their own behaviour in relation to the responses and
welfare of others and in relation to how they would themselves be judged by others,
developing their moral sentiments through social interaction. Smith's advocacy of
markets was qualified by the assumption not only that there would be significant
342 A Sayer

public investment and state provisionöfor example, in education and infrastructure

(he was far from an advocate of laisser-faire)öbut also that commercial society would
be a moral economy in which self-interest was itself intimately tied to the welfare of others
and would be balanced by benevolence and justice. This is a long way from the neoliberal
Smithöan invention based on taking a couple of short passages from An Inquiry into the
Nature and Census of the Wealth of Nations (1976) [1776]) out of context and projecting
neoclassical assumptions from over a century later back onto his ideas. As I hope to
demonstrate, we can still gain insights into consumer culture by drawing upon his moral
philosophy.
Commodification affects our lives most directly through employment and consump-
tion. Though both involve markets, in labour markets workers (or rather their labour
power) are in varying degrees treated as if they themselves were commodities, whereas in
the consumer-product markets people are the buyers rather than the bought. Although
some would argue that commodification has a bigger impact on people's lives through
employment than it has through product markets (for example, Lane, 1991; 1998) in this
paper I shall concentrate on the influence of commodification on consumption.
Consumption covers very diverse activities and any particular act of consumption
implicates several different social ^ material relations: between the consumer and
producer; between the consumer and the purchaser (for example, child and parent); (1)
with other consumers, whether they are joint consumers, third parties affected by
externalities, others who might also have claims on the same resources (including
distant others and future generations), or competitors for status and recognition in the
struggles of the social field a© la Smith, Thorstein Veblen, and Pierre Bourdieu; and finally
there are the relations with ecological systems, whose moral dimensions and implica-
tions are of increasing concern. What is beneficial with respect to one relation (for
example, parent ^ child) could be highly damaging with respect to another relation
(for example, rich consumer ^ poor consumer). Although we might expect a rough
correlation between this series of social relations and geographical scale, the correlation
is weakening as continued globalisation churns up and reconfigures geographical
hierarchies. This is not to say that distance does not matter, but that it matters in terms
of the particular processes constituting itöfor example, relations between concrete
others, between strangers, between members of the same or different social groups,
perhaps with different incomes, etc, which involve commodity exchanges, gifts, or
redistributed goods. Different theories and evaluations of consumption tend to apply
to just some rather than to all of these relations, and in this paper I can only attend to
some of them.
Early predisciplinary social science, in which positive and normative discourse
formed a seamless whole, was characterised by an overarching concern with the
emerging moral order of the new society öhow it would be affected by the development
of commerce, individualism, and democracy, and what would follow the (generally
celebrated) decline of tradition. Greater concern was voiced about the cultural and
moral consequences of the rise of capitalism than about economic inequalities. There
were fears not only about the loss of traditions and weakening of communities but about
the possible rise in egotism and hedonism. One of the key features of markets is that
they allow individuals (with sufficient money) to realise their preferences without any
need for getting the approval of others. This was welcomed by economic liberals, for
whom markets answered the call of political liberalism for individuals to be allowed to
choose what they consider to be best for them rather than having some external
conception of the good imposed on them. Indeed, for neoliberals, commodification
encourages individual responsibility and personal investment.
(1) Both producer ^ consumer and purchaser ^ consumer relations of course may be relations-to-self.
(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy 343

In addition to fears of increasing egotism, there have been recurrent concerns that
commodification, as a change from producing what previously or otherwise might have
been simply use values to producing goods for their exchange value, tends to induce a
change in normative values and hence a major cultural shift: by elevating exchange
value over use value, questions of what is good give way to the question of what can be
sold at a profit.(2) This has often been associated with the fear that the rise of
`commercial societies' would encourage vanity, the valuation of appearances, and status
over worth and achievement. Just as, for the commodity producer, it did not matter if
the use value of the commodity they produced was good or bad, as long as it sold and
brought them a profit, so it would not matter what a consumer was like or had done
so long as they could convince others to admire or envy them, and conspicuous
consumption would help them do that. Thus, appearances would come to be the
measure of worth (O'Neill, 1999; Smith, 1757). Worse, income, wealth, and expenditure
would become measures of the worth of individuals. More recently, research on
consumption has emphasised how it functions as a means by which people can
construct identities (for example, Cook et al, 1999; Jackson and Thrift, 1995), but
others have seen it as a threat to identity, inviting the illusion that material possessions
(and their sign values), rather than commitments and relationships, are the basis of
personal identity (O'Neill, 1999; Slater, 1997).
As Daniel Miller (2001a) notes, many of the moralistic critiques of consumption
have been based on elitist prejudices rather than on empirical evidence of how people
consume. However, I shall argue that, in addition to correcting this empirical deficit,
we need to develop rather than to abandon available normative resources for under-
standing evaluating commodification and consumption. These include distinctions
between internal and external goods, and between worth and status. As we shall see,
doing so need not result in a more negative view of consumption and consumer
culture, though such is the diversity of activities conventionally included under the
economistic abstraction of `consumption' that one should not expect unreservedly
favourable evaluations either.
Given the unusual inclusion of explicitly normative arguments, I should perhaps
first comment on the thorny question of how normative arguments are to be
`grounded'. The normative grounding of any critique often seems elusive and much of
what is claimed to be `critical' social science does not reveal or examine the grounds for
its critiques, so that, for example, it uses critical terms like `oppression' and `racism'
without providing arguments for why anyone should object to them. However, this
avoidance is perhaps understandable in that as soon as authors make normative
thinking more explicit they are typically met with a popular sceptical reaction to
the very possibility of defending normative claims öthey are surely `subjective' and
`culturally relative'. Such responses are themselves symptomatic of the expulsion of
normative thought from most social-science education, and of the extraordinary insen-
sitivity of much recent social theoryöboth radical and conservativeöto the moral
dimension of social life. The sceptical reaction is undoubtedly hard to respond to,
though arguments against subjectivism and relativism can be found in any introduction
to ethical theory (for example, Blackburn, 2001; Norman, 1998; Williams, 1972).
Although scepticism is easy to profess, it is virtually impossible to practise. Those
who, in the seminar room, are radical sceptics about the defensibility of normative
arguments, and who dismiss them as subjective and merely culturally relative, get as

(2) We can see this beginning to happen under our noses in universities with the shift from doing
research for its own sake to getting research grants (with overheads!), and the valuing of the size of
the grant rather than the research itself.
344 A Sayer

upset as anyone else if someone wrongs or injures them in practice; they do not say,
`if you want to treat me that way I can see no grounds for objecting': they argue and
remonstrate, appealing to criteria which are not merely subjective and relative.
In the absence of knock-down arguments and the impossibility of scepticism, all we
can do is sift out better from worse arguments from the range available. This paper is
influenced by recent neo-Aristotelian theories of authors such as Amartya Sen (1992)
and Martha Nussbaum (1999). Though there is not space to elaborate them, they imply
a position which might be termed `minimal ethical naturalism'. It is a kind of ethical
naturalism because it involves the argument that the meaning of `good' and `bad'
depends on what kind of beings humans are and on the nature of their broad capacities
for flourishing and suffering. It is minimal because: (a) it recognises that these capaci-
ties are always and everywhere culturally mediated (though not simply culturally
produced), and are therefore varied in form, and (b) it recognises that in addition there
are needs which are indeed wholly culturally determined and relative, whose satisfac-
tion also influences whether members of particular cultures flourish (for example, the
need of Muslims to pray).
My purpose in putting forward these normative arguments is not to `legislate' but
to invite those who disagree with them to respond with better normative arguments.
This approach is different from smugly avoiding engagement by recourse to the cop-
out of `it's all relative or subjective'öa response which belies the immense importance
that all people attach to how they treat or are treated by one another.
I shall focus on two major themes: the effects of commodification on how people
value things, practices, themselves, and others, and the alleged encouragement, by
commodification, of individualism and selfishness. Although I believe the older
critiques of consumer culture are still important, I wish to argue that they present
an overly negative view of commodification which fails to account for the lack of
popular resistance to it. I shall argue first that this is because they see commodifica-
tion overwhelmingly from the point of view of the seller and not enough from the
point of view of the consumer or user. Accordingly they tend to overlook the way in
which the use of commodities ö or at least the use of final consumer goodsö involves
a process of decommodification or recontextualisation in which the emphasis is on
use value (and sign value), not on exchange value, and in which the incorporation of
goods within signifying social practices, the stuff of culture, looms large. I shall then
introduce a distinction between internal and external goods in order to assess the
critical analyses of consumer culture of Veblen and Bourdieu, in which they empha-
sise the competitive pursuit of status. This will be followed by further use of the
distinction to attempt to illuminate symbolic domination and the influence of class
upon consumer culture. Lastly, I shall consider the implications of Miller's work on
consumption and altruism for older critiques of consumer culture, and conclude.

Commodities and decommodification

Commodities have both use value and exchange value (3) and elicit two radically differ-
ent kinds of valuation. We assess use values qualitatively and according to different
often incommensurable standardsöbe they qualities of films, food, houses, or bank-
ing servicesöand hence disagreements over their valuation refer to and sometimes

(3)In anthropology there has been a tendency to use broad definitions of commodities which define
them simply as objects (use values) that are exchangeable, including not only those exchanged for
money but those exchanged directly for others through barter (for example, Appadurai, 1986).
Although this has its advantages for comparing different cultures, it also fatally occludes some
distinctions which are crucial for understanding modern capitalist culture and economy.
(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy 345

dispute different criteria for different use values (Anderson, 1993). These qualities have
particular associations or meanings for users, or, in more recent terms (following Jean
Baudrillard), they have `sign value', though there is nothing new about this.(4) Valuation
invokes and evokes meanings of the thing valued for the valuer, and, as meanings are
always social, valuations have a social dimension (Anderson, 1993). This is especially
where use values are concerned, in the case of not only informational products like
books, lessons, or films but also products like food or holidays, whose associations
are part of what we value about them. These associations may be strongly attached to
the character of the object and subject, such as the association between a sofa and
relaxation, whereas others may seem arbitrarily related, such as the association between
a certain brand of jeans and a particular youth subculture. Although, as Baudrillard
argued in his discussions of sign value, arbitrary relations between sign and use value
may be becoming more common, this can be acknowledged without imagining that use
value is no longer important, or that it is always detached from sign value. In contrast,
exchange value is quantitative: in determining how much one thing will exchange for
another we commensurate the incommensurable and compare them on a single scale
regardless of qualitative differences in the objects exchanged.
Aristotle's distinction between production for use and for money making (in which a
means to the economic end of consumptionömoneyöbecomes the end of economic
activity) was described by Karl Polanyi as ``probably the most prophetic pointer ever
made in the history of the social sciences'' (1957 [1944], page 53; see also Booth, 1993).
It anticipated the shift later summarised in Karl Marx's notation as a move from
C ^ M ^ C (the sale of commodities for money in order to buy commodities) to
M ^ C ^ M' (the advancement of money capital to buy and produce commodities for
sale in order to make a profit) (Marx, 1976). With the rise of capitalism, what was merely
an incidental pathological aberration or vice in Aristotle's timeöthe direction of
economic activity towards the accumulation of money öbecomes an imperative (Booth,
1993). Yet, although this is the goal of capital or its condition of survival, which it
ignores at its peril, it is not normally the goal of either labour or of other final
consumers; employees work for money, but primarily as a means to buy commodities
for their use value. On the other hand, if they are working for capitalist organisations,
and increasingly if they are employed by underfunded public organisations, being able
to contribute to the production of profit is a condition of their being able to receive a
wage as a means to their end of getting use values. Commodification in relation to wage
labour and labour markets therefore has different implications from commodification
in relation to consumer product markets.(5)
Commodification appears to be rampant, influencing social relations and culture
to an unprecedented degree, and much of social science since Marx's time has been
concerned with studying the implications of this shift. However, from the point of view
of consumers, commodification is not so much a durable state as a series of passing
moments, and is continually being negated in consumption or use. More generally,

(4) Although, after Baudrillard, sign value is often seen as superceding use value, this is implausible,

for what commodities signify is generally not unrelated to their use value: if the use value of BMWs
was quite different öif they were unreliable, susceptible to rust, and slowötheir sign value would
be quite different. Commodities can have both use value and sign value, and of course it remains
the case that they would soon cease to be produced if they did not yield exchange value.
(5) It should be noted that, although commodities are overwhelmingly associated with capitalism,

they can also be produced outside capital ^ labour relations, in petty-commodity production or
state-organised production. The development of capital ^ labour relations adds different effects
to those of petty-commodity or state-organised productionöeffects which therefore should not
be attributed to commodities alone.
346 A Sayer

although our culture is in many ways unprecedentedly commodified, as Miller and

others have pointed out, consumption has a significant degree of independence from
the sphere of capitalist production. This derives not only from the fact that much of it
takes place at different times and places from commodity production, but also from
the fact that consumption usually offers ways of decommodifying the objects produced
and exchanged as commoditiesöindeed, this is a precondition of the continued pro-
duction and sale of commodities. Until recently, radical theory has overlooked this. In
focusing primarily on production, it has failed to understand one of the main sources
of contentment withöor at least lack of resistance toöcapitalism, and contributed to
a one-sidedly negative view of commodification and consumer culture.
As Igor Kopytoff (1986) notes, once final consumers of commodities have bought them
they usually decommodify them by ignoring what was or might become their exchange
value, and they take advantage of their use values and sign value, often in personalised
ways. Only if the purchased goods are intended for resaleörecommodificationöis this
process suspended. Thus the CD or the shoes or the car take on specific patterns of use
and significance to the consumer and others. At the moment of exchange, the producer of
commodities is concerned with something universalisable, their exchange value, but the
way in which final consumers use them has the effect of `singularising' them, or, as Miller
puts it, `recontextualising' them. It follows, therefore, that it is a mistake to imagine
that once a commodity always a commodity. Just as capital goes through certain
`moments' in its circulation, changing its social and (other) material relations accordingly,
so commodities go through a series of moments, of which exchange for money is just one
albeit the key moment from the point of view of sellers.
Kopytoff 's argument complements the observation that the growth of commodifica-
tion is matched by the expenditure of increased energies in the cultural definition, location,
or classification of decommodified objects. This is why advertising of final consumption
goods, which of course is aimed at increasing sales revenues, so frequently focuses on this
process of decommodification, not only by highlighting the functional qualities of what is
on sale but by trying to create appealing sign values for them, often including the promise
of enhanced attractiveness, status, sociability, personal liberation, and even cathartic
experiences. At least where final consumption goods are concerned, (6) the continued
success of commodity production therefore depends on successful decommodification
by the consumer, usually with a cultural steer by the producer.

Cultural and moral aspects of (de)commodification: internal and external goods

In order to develop the above points I want to use a distinction between internal and
external goods. This is a modified version of the distinction introduced by MacIntyre
in his critique of modernity (1981, pages 187f ).(7) Something similar is also implicit in
Smith's distinction between praiseworthy acts and praise (1757). Although it is asso-
ciated in MacIntyre's case with a critical stance towards consumer culture, I shall
argue that it need not be. I shall begin by explaining the distinction and its normative
implications for the consumption of commodities. I shall then use it to address the
concerns of Smith, Veblen, and especially Bourdieu about consuming for status. In
particular I shall argue that the distinction can resolve some problems in Bourdieu's
analysis of symbolic domination, class, and consumption.

(6) Intermediate goods are different insofar as they are often means to the end of generating more

exchange value for producers.

(7) For further commentaries on the implications of the concept for social theory see Peter McMylor

(1994) and for commodification and the arts see Russell Keat (2000).
(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy 347

The distinction and its normative implications

Internal goods are those which are internal to a practice in which one takes part,
such as the specific achievements, skills, and satisfactions of participating in
sports, art, music, academic study, cooking, or medicine, or which, alternatively,
are internal to relationships, such as a friendship or parenting.(8) While I may
achieve and enjoy internal goods through these relationships and activities, they
may also bring me external goods of approbation, fame, prestige, and money. Whereas
the internal goods of making music, intellectual work, friendship, or cooking, etc are
specific to each relationship and activity, the external goods which one might
achieve through them are less related to their character, particularly in the case of
money.
This distinction partially overlaps with that between use value and exchange
value, but the differences between the two distinctions are several. First, whereas
the use value/exchange value couple is characteristic of commodities, internal and
external goods relate to things which may be unrelated to commodities, indeed
they relate to things which cannot be commodified such as friendships. Second,
and related to this, internal goods are not evaluated in such narrowly utilitarian
terms as use values, but may have ethical dimensions. Third, they are not so
much about what one might get from things but about what one can achieve with
them. Fourth, one might sometimes want to argue that the use value of something
includes its possibilities not only for providing access to internal goods, but also
for promoting external goods, as in the case of a prestigious car. Fifth, exchange
value or money is not the only kind of external good, for there are nonpecuniary
kinds, too.
In some cases the pursuit of internal and external goods may be compatible, as
in making music or consuming luxury goods; in others the pursuit of both may be
mutually exclusive ö as when trying to befriend someone as a way of making money
undermines the friendship. Although some practices ö for example, sport ö may
involve competitive behaviour, success may enrich the internal goods of practices in
ways which benefit others. For example, winning innovations in football tactics and
skills help to develop the game and enrich it for others. However, competition for
external goods is a zero-sum or positional affair, in that it is impossible for all to
benefit simultaneously ö for example, for all to have high status.
Although they are not always incompatible, the normative implications of the
pursuit of internal and external goods are very different. While, like Smith, MacIntyre
acknowledges that external goods are genuinely goods that ``no-one can despise ... with-
out a certain hypocrisy'' (1981, page 196), (9) he, again like Smith, argues that they
are properly tied to and parasitic upon internal goods (see also O'Neill, 1999).
When we assess a research project in terms of its internal goods, we focus on things
like the quality of its methodology, its use of theory, and so on. In assessing it
in terms of external goods we ask how big the grant was, how much publicity
it has had, and so on. We expect external goods to be proportionate to the internal
goods; a sloppily designed, undertheorised bit of data bashing should not be
rewarded with praise or money, whereas one that is carefully designed and theorised,

(8) To be precise, in After Virtue (1981, pages 187f ) MacIntyre ties the concept of internal goods

strongly to his specialised concept of `practices', exemplified by things like music, chess, art,
philosophy, but `internal goods' also applies to the goods involved in consuming use values and
to relationships such as love and friendship.
(9) As Judith Lichtenberg (1998) also notes, we would generally regard anyone who was completely

indifferent to what others thought of them as psychologically suspect.

348 A Sayer

etc should.(10) Smith's point was that the internal goods (or `praiseworthy acts')
would be good even if no one happened to praise them (Smith, 1757). When a teacher
manages to teach a child to read, both have achieved internal goods regardless of
whether either gets any praise for it, though of course one hopes that they would be
praised. We are social beings and we need the recognition of others (Honneth, 1995):
the question is what the recognition is for, or, to put it provocatively, whether there is
any problem with anyone being just `famous for being famous', or, having unearned
income, or, more generally, receiving external goods unrelated to any internal goods.
The fear of many commentators was that the rise of capitalism and a highly com-
modified culture would lead to the prioritising of external goods over internal
goods.(11)
Although the distinction between internal and external goods is helpful for a critical
analysis of consumer culture, it can also lead to a more favourable view of it than those
critiques which emphasise the pursuit of status as uppermost in consumption. It is well
established that consumption choices help to construct lifestyles and identities. In
some cases, the construction of lifestyles may amount to little more than a matter of
cultivating appearances and style as a means of winning approbation, perhaps based
on the assumption that personal identities can be bought. But lifestyles may also involve
and support serious commitments (12) to certain practices (in MacIntyre's sense),
relationships, and ways of life, enabling people to do things for internal goods. These
commitments and relationships usually require some expenditure. Would-be chefs buy
recipe books, cooking equipment, and special foods in pursuit of the internal goods
of cooking; musicians buy instruments to enable them to make music; academics buy
books to further their intellectual inquiries; parents buy toys for their children's
enjoyment; and institutionalised practices such as medicine require extensive pur-
chases of equipment, for the good of those whom they serve. Although MacIntyre's
analysis of internal and external goods in relation to practices continues the antimarket
themes of classical theorists' fears that commodification would encourage the elevation
of appearances over worth and deeds, this does not necessarily follow. One could argue
that consumers have been more successful in avoiding these tendencies than such
theorists anticipated, indeed, that the rise in real incomes in the richer countries of
the world allowed by the rising tide of cheap yet often good-quality commodities has
allowed far more people to obtain the goods and services needed to participate in and
develop practices for their internal goods than would otherwise have been the case.
As usual there are further qualifications to be made. Buying things so as to
facilitate the pursuit of internal goods still allows a range of motives öfrom the selfish,
to the self-interested-but-not-selfish, to the benevolent or altruistic, to ones which are
neither egotistic nor altruistic. There are also problematic inequalities in access to
practices and internal goods. The inequalities of the social field are only secondarily
about the distribution of status: they are primarily about access to internal goods.

(10) Some may want to protest that descriptions such as `carefully designed' are themselves just

external descriptions, but this misses the point, for of course all descriptions are in a sense
`external': the point is that the goods in question (to do with learning) are internal to the practice
of research, whereas those of fame are not. Although the goods of fame are good to have, research
can be done without them.
(11) Although Smith deplored consumption driven by vanity he also noted in his typically ambiva-

lent way that it would nevertheless help to stimulate industry, and raise living standards for all.
I would argue that this ambivalence is well founded, given the complexity of capitalism and the
many different social relations implicated in any act of consumption within it. Consumption is
often good and bad.
(12) This is not to imply that practices cannot be fun.
(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy 349

Internal and external goods and Bourdieu

I now want to relate the internal/external goods distinction to the relationship between
consumption and status, with particular reference to the work of Bourdieu. Bourdieu's
interests in these matters had many precursurs. Where Smith briefly mentioned reserva-
tions about the use of consumption for display and vanity, Veblen famously developed a
more sweeping critique of the use of consumption for status seeking (1970). However, as
Lichtenberg (1998) has argued, consuming because others consume may be driven by a
desire not necessarily to demonstrate superiority over them but rather to achieve
equality with them, and, we might add, not merely in terms of external goods. What
looks like status rivalry from Veblen's position looks different in the terms of the theory
of relative deprivation. In practice, as style fascism implies, things may be more
ambiguous in that being equal to peers may be a way of suggesting superiority relative
to nonpeers. As we shall see later, there are also moral aspects to these relationships, the
recognition of which tends to support Lichtenberg's contention.
In Distinction, Bourdieu provided an empirical analysis of status rivalry and
symbolic domination in relation to taste by applying economic categories to all spheres
of life. Individuals and groups gain differing amounts and types of economic and
noneconomic capital, particularly `cultural capital', partly through what they consume
and how they consume it (Bourdieu, 1984). Consumption practices and objects signify
particular positions in the social field. Use of and reference to consumer goods and
practices are prominent in behaviours of symbolic domination and the subaltern
strategies of deference, making a virtue out of necessity (`we would not want that
anyway') and resistance. Although the differences of taste and appearance that mark
out the differentiations of the social field and the relative positions of the dominant
and subordinate are complex and subtle, and sometimes difficult to describe, we can
often also `see them a mile off '. Judgments of the worth of goods and practices are
closely associated with judgments of superiority and inferiority of social groups. These
distinctions are continually contested and in flux, as particular objects and practices
and the `capital' associated with them are revalued or devalued. Particularly for the
subordinated, for whom this marking process is often one of stigmatisation, awareness
of its significance can be one of the most painful aspects of their experience, as they
are likely to be torn between accepting the evaluative criteria of the dominant, so as to
appear respectable, and refusing such criteria and hence confirming the dominant
groups' negative views of them (Reay, 1998; Sennett and Cobb, 1973; Skeggs, 1997).
However, Bourdieu's analysis of status struggles, through concepts of cultural, social,
and other forms of noneconomic capital, conflates the use value and internal goods of
objects and practices with their exchange value or associated statusöexternal goodsöin
terms of advantages they bring to their possessors. There is a difference between the use
value of a car and the status it contingently brings us in terms of advantages vis-a©-vis
others. There is a difference between the internal goods of being able to play the cello and
the status or cultural capital it brings, though Bourdieu does not distinguish them. There is
a difference between friendship and the external goods it may bring such as `opening
doors', though Bourdieu subsumes both under `social capital'. Status is an external good
and is an important aspect of sign value, and like exchange value it yields advantages or
profits vis-a©-vis others who lack it or have less. More generally, status is a positional
goodöthat is, one whose value varies inversely with the number of people who have it.
To be sure, just as exchange value often varies directly with use value, so status
sometimes varies with the quality of the objects or practices which it is taken to signify.
However, both exchange value and status can also vary independently of the quality of
the associated use values, they can be either overvalued (as in the case of the `sham') or
undervalued (Bourdieu, 1984; Sayer, 1999a; 1999b). In general, given the hierarchical
350 A Sayer

`slope' of the social field, the goods, practices, and people associated with the dominant
are likely to be overvalued, whereas those associated with the dominated or subaltern are
likely to be undervalued.
It is in the interest of producers and sellers to treat exchange value as a good
measure of use value, and in the interest of the vain to pretend that their personal
value is reflected in what they own and consume, as early critics of commodification
such as Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau feared. Yet the struggles of the social
field over consumption are not just about exchange value, or about the rate of exchange
of different types of cultural capital, and involve more than strategies of `talking up'ö
or talking downögoods and practices in order to gain advantages over others. They
are also about what actors think goods and practices are worth in use-value, aesthetic,
and ethical terms, regardless of whether they bring those who own or are involved in
them external goods such as prestige. The struggles between popular and elite culture,
for example, are not just a pure battle for power and prestige for their own sake, but a
battle over the appropriate recognition of the qualities of the goods and practices
themselves by reference to the internal criteria of those practicesöbe they music, art,
sport, literature, and so on. In other words, the struggles of the cultural field include
competing claims about the valuation of objects and practices themselves and about
what is good for us, not necessarily in order to change actors' status by raising the
(exchange) valuation of the cultural capital associated with them, but because they
care about the objects and practices themselves.(13) Social inequalities and struggles
are about the definition and distribution of capital of various kinds not merely in terms
of external goods, but in terms of internal goods, too.
Of course, this is not always the case. In some cases of symbolic competitions of
the social field, such as the petty forms of `style fascism', the point of the rivalries may
be simply oriented to enhancing the owners' status regardless of what they actually do
and what kinds of people they are. One of the ironies of markets is that, although they
allow people the freedom to be able to acquire things without the need for anyone
else's approval (provided they have the money), consumers may nonetheless buy things
in order to win approval. This often centres on the purchase of branded goods, and is a
surprisingly enduring feature of the behaviour and symbolic rivalries of social groups
across the whole social field.
At the same time, thankfully, such strategies are easily seen through; indeed, doing so
is an important strategy in countering the `soft forms of domination' which Bourdieu
analyses. To refuse to acknowledge any other goal and criterion of valuation than
personal gain, the pursuit of cultural and social capital, etc, is ironically to mirror the
priorities of the market: as long as you can persuade people to buy or that you have
status, that is all that mattersöprofit (nonpecuniary as well as pecuniary) is the measure
of worth. In part, this is appropriate for a highly commodified culture, but only in part,

(13) Sociological reductionism reduces these use-value disputes to struggles over mere status or

exchange value. Postmodernist relativists (for example, Clarke and Doel, 2000) suspect that
defences of the use-value/exchange-value distinction merely disguise an authoritarian distinction
between claims which have truth status and claims which are merely imagined. Like neoclassical
economists, relativists argue that both are purely subjective, and that worth is and should be
dependent on recognition rather than vice versa (O'Neill, 1998; 1999). However, I am not arguing
that use value can be established beyond dispute whereas exchange value is `merely subjective': both
are disputed; indeed, disputes over use values can be constitutive of practices (MacIntyre, 1981).
Pace David Clarke and Marcus Doel (2000, page 222), the important point is that disputes over
use value differ in kind from those over exchange value: the former are about the qualities some-
thing is held to have (for example, in the case of a car, reliability, speed, miles-per-gallon, comfort,
beauty, pollution, etc) and whether they are good for us and the environment; the latter is about
what it will or should sell for, relative to other commodities.
(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy 351

for even within such a culture we still make some judgments of use value and of what to
do regardless of whether it brings us approbationöindeed, sometimes in spite of
anticipated misapprobation. The most cynical interpretation of actions is not necessarily
the best. The whole critical thrust of Bourdieu's work on symbolic domination implies
that it is unjust and arbitrary, but his crypto-normative approach(14) and his quasi-
neoclassical use of the concept of capital, coupled with his reluctance to accept that
judgments (other than his own) can be disinterested, deny him the grounds for arguing
why it is unjust (Sayer, 1999a). The most important kind of counter to undeserved
external goods is the recourse to evaluation of use values, and valuation according to
the internal goods and criteria of practices, contentious though this usually is. Otherwise,
we can only interpret the symbolic competition as merely a groundless struggle for power
without justification, thereby removing any basis for criticising the resulting inequalities.
It is common for judgments of use value or worth to be coloured by status in terms
of position in the social field. Smith referred to distortion according to wealth as ``the
great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments'' (1757,
page 61), causing us to use doubleöor multiple östandards for assessing the same
behaviour in individuals from different classes. Clearly there are equivalent distortions
of moral sentiments according to gender, `race', etc. Differences in consumption
patterns between social groups reflect not only differences in taste but also hierarchies
of wealth, gender, and `race', and the valuation of goods reflects this too. Thus the
pursuit of internal and external goods does not take place on a level playing field but
within a hierarchy that is definedöat least in relation to commoditiesöpredominantly
by economic class, which in turn has little to do with merit or desert. As Bourdieu
demonstrates, this is a hierarchy in which the dominant claim not only superior wealth
and the power over others that derives from this but also superiority in taste.
Although, surprisingly, Bourdieu leaves it implicit, the behaviour of the dominant
also betrays an assumption of superiority in moral worth relative to others. The
dominant try to establish a hegemony in which their dominance is a justified conse-
quence of their superiority over others; they are more worthy of merit, more deserving.
This moral dimension, surely, is the crucialöand most reprehensibleöfeature of
symbolic domination. As a result, valuations or judgments of goods become entangled
with the class hierarchy and symbolic domination; the associations of class spill over
into associations of quality and the good. This hegemony is contested, but the con-
testation can take two forms: a rarer, socialist one which recognises that class is a
structural feature of capitalism and that individuals' class position has more to do with
the accident of birth and subsequent luck in markets than with merit or moral worth,
and a more common populist one which disputes only the positioning of particular
individuals or groups within the hierarchy, which is itself taken as given. The struggles
of the social field documented in Distinction are mainly of the second kind.
The dominant classes obviously have the most economic, cultural, social, educa-
tional, and other forms of capital for gaining goods and they have the means for
passing on their advantages to their children. But symbolic domination not only
involves demonstrably being able to buy the most and the best, it also implies that
anything which the dominant classes have, do, or value must be superior simply
because it is associated with them. In effect, this could be described as `playing the
class card'. This can be illuminated by examining the meaning of the word `posh' in
English. (15) Posh is a marker of high class position, be it a posh accent, posh car, posh
(14) In his subsequent, more explicitly political, work, particularly in The Weight of the World, Bourdieu

is more open about the normative presuppositions of his critiques (Bourdieu and Accardo, 1999).
(15) The word derives from the days of steamer ships from Britain to India when the upper classes

would select cabins on the Port Out and Starboard Home in order to be in the shade.
352 A Sayer

wedding, or whatever. It is vital to understand that posh corresponds only contingently

to the good but its use often conceals this through a double slippage of meaning: first,
from associations of upper or middle classness to ones of quality and worth, and,
second, from quality and worth back to their owners, so that posh is equated not
only with superior goods but with people who are in some way supposedly superior.
The first slippage is not surprising given that expensive versions of particular commodi-
ties are generally better than cheap ones, and are affordable only by the affluent.
On the other hand, regarding the second slippage, from the superior quality of goods
to the supposed superiority of their owners, merely refusing this slide by denying
(correctly) that posh is necessarily good still leaves the class hierarchy intact.
It merely challenges the support it gets from symbolic domination. The rich might
lose some of their respect but they would keep their disproportionate wealth. This
reminds us that who wins and who loses in capitalist consumer culture has scarcely
anything to do with moral worth, and that, where class is concerned, distribution is
not wholly dependent on recognition.
The striving for respectability that the dominated feel pressured into when they find
themselves talking posh in the company of people of higher class, spending more than
they can afford on weddings, not wanting to look `cheap', etc are all understandable but
doomed ways of proving that `we are as good as them'. `The construction of identities'
is not merely about the aesthetics of lifestyle but about moral worth and recognition.
The struggle is doomed because it is one which the subaltern are not allowed to win,
and it is in any case irrational to judge people's moral worth according to whether their
vowels are flat, what they wear at weddings, where they can afford to live, etc. It is also
understandable because we all need recognition öof equality if not superiorityöand
material goods do influence our ability to live a fulfilling life, enjoying both the support
and the autonomy to participate in relationships and pursue commitments.(16)
The spoken and unspoken interactions of the social field, including those involved
in consumer culture, are pervaded with subtle and not so subtle sentiments of `class
contempt' (Reay, 1998) (17) which are extraordinarily sensitive to indicators of accent,
demeanour, appearance, clothing, and possessions. We should not need reminding of
these familiar pathologies of our still highly classed consumer culture. If we ignore the
hierarchically structured field within which consumption takes place, we may confuse
the struggle for respectability of the subaltern with a struggle for advantage driven by
vanity or, alternatively, see it as simply an expression of `difference'.(18)
Despiteöor because oföevidence of the continuing importance of class and other
inequalities in consumption (Warde, 1996) and symbolic competition in consumption,
some consumers may want to break free of status markers and buy goods and services
which they imagine escape these associations.(19) For Bourdieu, the idea that we can
escape the markers of our social location through our consumption choices is entirely
illusoryöa ``dream of social flying, a desperate effort to defy the gravity of the social
field'' (1984, page 370). Nevertheless, from a normative point of view (which may be
present in lay motivations), the dream of escape from the influence of the distortion of
moral and aesthetic judgments by class and other relations of domination remains central
(16) I am here alluding to the work of Sen and Nussbaum on capabilities and functionings (for a

good summary see Crocker, 1998).

(17) Bourdieu uses the term `class racism' (1984) but this invites unwanted associations in the

understanding of the experience of class.

(18) In this context it is interesting that recent British research on class shows that many people prefer

to call themselves `ordinary' rather than either working class or middle class.
(19) Advertising may try to have it both ways, implying that as consumers we are free to break out of

our old social locationsöbut with the promise of moving up to a higher status one.
(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy 353

to egalitarianism (Tawney, 1952). It amounts to a desire to distinguish the good from the
merely posh, and to pursue internal goods regardless of the class-influenced distribution
of external goods.
Finally, notwithstanding these points, inequalities in consumption and internal and
external goods may not have as much influence on individual happiness as one might
expect. As Robert Lane has shown in his major review of empirical research on
markets (1991; 1998), increased wealth is correlated only with increased happiness for
roughly the poorest fifth of the population of rich countries (a conclusion which Smith
conjectured in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1976
[1776]). In terms of happiness and fulfillment in life, the quantity and quality of
commitments and relationships that we can form are more important than material
consumption beyond a basic level. This emphasises the importance of things which
cannot be commodified, but nevertheless whose attainment may be assisted by buying
commodities. We might be sceptical about this finding, given the common tendency of
the poor to rationalise their situation and to make a virtue of necessity or simply to be
unaware of the benefits which are denied to them by their lack of income, but it is also
a powerful rebuttal to the capitalist pressure to consume. We might also be puzzled,
given the demand for more material wealth.

Altruism and consumption

From the standpoint of markets and sellers, buyers appear as individuals with money,
seeking to satisfy their individual preferences, and all that is necessary from the seller's
point of view is that the buyer can afford what he or she wants. Although this is true it
does not mean that the buyer cannot consider others' interests, needs, and advice, or be
influenced by moral sentiments, norms, and prescriptions; it means only that his or her
doing so is not a necessary condition of the reproduction of markets. The oversight
of this social and moral dimension has been reinforced by the individualist versions of
liberalism (20) that have come to dominate theories of economic life, with their inade-
quate concept of the individual as adult, implicitly masculine, free of dependants, and
not needing anything from others beyond what he or she can buy. Both market
advocates and critics often overlook the fact that consumers differ from the individual-
istic model, being embedded in social relations whose meaning is central to their lives.
As Miller has shown, there is a more direct and concrete moral dimension to shopping
and consumption than there is to those aspects discussed above (1998; 2001a). His
ethnography of shopping in North London highlights how far shopping is directed
towards others, particularly family members, and how far it is guided by moral
sentiments towards them and about how to live. Far from being individualistic, self-
indulgent, and narcissistic, much shopping is based on relationships, indeed on love.
It often involves considerable thoughtfulness about the particular desires and needs of
others, though it may also reflect the aspirations which the shopper has for them,
thereby functioning as a way of influencing them.(21) Thus the pursuit of material
possessions and their sign values is not necessarily at odds with the maintenance and
development of commitments and relationships as the basis of personal identity. To be
sure, shoppers may also sometimes seek to buy `treats' for themselves, but even here

(20) However, it should be noted that not all liberals share(d) this individualist view: for example,

Adam Smith (1757), John Stuart Mill (1990 [1859]), and, more recently, Will Kymlicka (1990), and
Martha Nussbaum (1999).
(21) Thus Zygmunt Bauman is quite mistaken to claim that consumption is ``an archetypically

solitary pursuit however many the consumers who join in it, and there is next to nothing that
solidarity and care for the well-being of others can add to consumption's single-minded pleasure''
(2000b, page ix).
354 A Sayer

the egotistical stereotype of shopping needs modification because shopping for treats
is defined precisely as the exception to the rule of shopping for others.
All this reflects the gendered nature of shopping, and the hidden gender bias in
traditional critiques of consumption. There is a danger of the celebration of the moral
dimension of consumption becoming an endorsement of the way it is gendered.
Equally, from the opposite point of view, there is a danger of critical awareness of its
gendered nature leading to a dismissal of the moral qualities of shopping for others.
What is most problematic is the gendering of the practice öthe fact that the burden of
this emotional labour is borne primarily by women, and not shared equally between
men and womenörather than the practice itself.(22)
In one sense, showing love or care for others through buying them things contrasts
with negative views of consumption in capitalism such as those of Christopher Lasch,
who thought that it had become a form of vain attempt at compensation for individuals'
increasingly alienated relationships with others (Lasch, 1979), and also contrasts with
those older fears that capitalism encouraged selfishness. Miller argues on the basis of
his North London research that, contrary to common assumption, ``It is those persons
who found that they were able to express their relationships through their manipulation
of their material worlds who formed the closest social networks ...'' (1995, page 24) (23)
and that low consumption relative to income was associated with limited networks of
friends. Miller's findings are nevertheless still indicative of strong capitalist pressures to
consume large quantities of commodities; indeed, it could be said to be a telling
example of the influence of capitalism on culture that shopping for others is such a
common way of showing love.
At the same time, such altruism may also assist family members in the cultivation
of appearances and indicators of status and respectability, the accumulation of cultural
capital, and pretensions to superiority over others. Though not strictly individualistic,
these external goods are positional goods in that they can help maintain or improve
family or group status at the expense of others; they are not generalisable.(24) Miller's
favourable picture of shopping for others may seem strikingly different in tone and
content from Bourdieu's merciless analysis of taste and distinction, but they are far
from incompatible.

Conclusion
Although, as Miller argues (2001b), judgments of consumer culture need a stronger
empirical basis, I hope to have demonstrated through the application of the distinction
between internal and external goods that it is also helpful to refine rather than to
ignore normative arguments.
The consumption of commodities presupposes the possibility of their decommodi-
fication or recontextualisation by their buyers. This recontextualisation can take
diverse forms öalthough it can centre on the pursuit of external goods, particularly
status, it also involves the pursuit of use values and can assist people in developing
commitments, relationships, and practices for their own sake and in achieving internal
goods. The indifference of commodification to moral worth and moral behaviour

(22) However, there are further normative complexities, for, as theorists of the ethics of care have

pointed out, care is not a simple unproblematic good (Sevenhuijsen, 1998).

(23) It is not clear whether this neutralises the common accusation that parents are increasingly trying

to attempt to buy their children's affections with presents for them instead of spending time with them.
(24) This use of advantages in one sphere (markets) to gain benefits where market principles are

inappropriate (or, in Bourdieu's terms, to convert economic capital into social and cultural capital)
is what Michael Walzer attacked (as `dominance') in his theory of `complex (in)equality' (1983).
(De)commodification, consumer culture, and moral economy 355

exposes consumers to the influence of symbolic domination, with its prioritisation of

positional goods monopolised by the dominant classes and its stigmatisation of those
whose access to internal goods is restricted. But it also allows consumers to be free to
follow their moral sentiments, and, as Miller has shown, these may be stronger than
many have realised.
Inequalities in consumption are important not only directly in terms of inequalities
in the amounts of possessions, but also indirectly in terms of the resulting differences
of access to internal and external goods and in terms of the distortion of moral
sentiments that results from this, so that consumption is seen as an indicator of
moral worth. The biggest danger is that in a highly commodified society we might
come to regard the worth of individuals to be indicated by their price and what they
own, and hence confirm Thomas Hobbes's assertion that: ``the Value or WORTH of a
man, is as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for
the use of his Power'' (Hobbes, cited in Radin, 1996, page 6). This would, of course,
mean that the poor are virtually worthless. Similarly, we might become like the
character of Oscar Wilde who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.
It is not easy to defend the distinction, but it is presupposed by any critique of how
commodities, people, and practices are valued (see O'Neill, 1999). If anyone were to
ask us what we were worth, we would be forcibly reminded of the difference between
our price and our moral worth.
Finally, it should be remembered that this has been a highly selective discussion of
the moral economy of commodification and consumer culture, focusing on just some
of the social ^ material relations that are implicated. The main omissions have been
the relations between rich and poor on a global scale in terms of ability to consume,
relations with future generations, and relations with ecological systems, which have
been the focus of recent red-and-green critiques. As Richard Wilks (2001) argues,
whatever the moral qualities of consumption within households in rich countries,
they do not negate the charges of excessive, unsustainable, and unequal consumption,
which are the outstanding features of the (im)moral economy of consumption globally.
How we evaluate consumption is likely to vary according to which of the several
different sets of social (and ecological) relations it involves we choose to examine.
What is innocuous or progressive with respect to one relation may be problematic
with respect to another, and there are still many more relations and aspects to consider
than those analysed here.
Acknowledgements. My thanks, with the usual disclaimers, to Anne Cronin, Alan Warde, and John
O'Neill for recommendations of reading and discussions.
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