Consuming Ambivalence

Eighteenth-century Public Discourse on Consumption and Mandeville's Legacy

Bibliographic Data

ID2391349
AuthorsR Sassatelli (0000-0003-4240-9691, University of East Anglia, corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume2
Issue3
Pages339-360
Publication date1997-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/135918359700200304
OpenAlexW2133792025
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited16

Contrasting diagnoses on commercial modernity have been typically organ ized by a normative dichotomy between consumption and production that can be traced back to the emergence of a public discourse on commodity circulation in 18th-century Britain. Within this framework, I re-interpret Bernard Mandeville as a proto-sociologist. Mandeville may be considered as the forerunner of a position that neither refuses nor celebrates com mercial modernity. He maintains that both hedonistic consumers and avari cious producers are slaves to their passions and yet conceives these passions as the sole ground on which individuals can construct themselves as subjects. The suggestion that commercial modernity fosters different forms of identity permits to consider modern consumer practices as ambivalent phenomena whereby subjects are forced to construct their own selves

Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Construct (python library · Consumption (sociology · Epistemology · Identity (music · Modernity · Normative · Passions · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Psychology