CONSUMPTION, IDENTITY-FORMATION AND UNCERTAINTY

This paper addresses some general issues concerning consumption that a rise from the work of Bauman, Beck and Giddens. All maintain that biog raphy is a reflexive project and that life-styles and consumption are critical to identity-formation and re-formation. Bauman, especially, m aintains that this is a source of anxiety, the freedom implied by cons umer choice entailing a commensurate degree of personal responsibility . He observes, for instance, that a function of advertising is to assu age the self-doubt that accompanies choice. I seek to argue that these accounts of the impact of reflexive modernisation on self-identity ar e misjudged. Consumption would be a much less pleasurable practice if it was both subject to ever-expanding free choice and the decisions ma de were fundamental components of a reflexive process of identity-form ation. Indeed, the consequence might well be high and visible levels o f distress among those individuals most deeply involved. That this is not apparent suggests that the relationships specified between the pro cess of identity-formation and consumption is tendentious. Consumption may be anxiety-provoking for some groups; there is a real element of risk involved in choosing inappropriately. But there are many mechanis ms that serve to compensate. I explore those mechanisms, suggesting th at anxiety is avoided through certain processes of group identificatio n and social regulation which the reflexive modernisation thesis claim s have atrophied. I conclude that such considerations require that the se theories about the relationship between consumption and self-identi ty be modified.