The Freedom of Choice and Today's Consumer Society

The term ‘consumer’ is used to describe the way society is today, in the same sense as we lived in an industrial society before this. The life we live is based around the activity of consuming in many ways, so much that we have come to live in a ‘consumer society’. When it comes to buying we like to believe we freely chose to buy that object, this means that we can buy something we want without any external influences. This essay is going to discuss the idea of freedom of choice in relation with today’s consumer society. The concepts ‘consumer society’ and ‘freedom of choice’ will be fully explored. Then will be discussed the variety of ways in which a person can be influenced. Then I’ll discuss the two concepts together to explore the claim that consumer society is characterised by freedom of choice further.

The official definition provided by oxforddictionaries.com states that a consumer society is “a society in which the buying and selling of goods and services is the most important social and economic activity.” We all take part in consuming, whether its a necessity or just an activity. We once lived in an ‘industrial society’, a place where we were defined by the job we had, now in the modern ‘consumer society’ we tend to define ourselves more on what we own. ‘Seduced’ and ‘Repressed’ are two ways in which it is seen that many societies can be divided (Baumen, 1988). Baumen is a social scientist who believes that today’s modern consumer society is not equal for all, but is split into two defininative groups, those who can afford the consumer lifestyle (the seduced), and those who can't (the repressed). According to Baumen, the seduced are those who are able to be admitted into the society “because they are able consume effectively in the eyes of others” (Hetherington, 2009, p. 27). On the opposite end of the scale lay the ‘repressed’, those who are unable to contribute to the increasing consumer society are seen to be part of this group. This would