Morality and Consumption: Subjectivity, Collectivity and Value

This paper engages with the relationship between morality and consumption, starting from the fundamental notion of consumer choice, linked to a hegemonic vision of the consumer as an autonomous and rational actor. In consumer culture, this notion plays the role of a normative claim around which subjects can organize their own moral justifications, assuming a central role in the legitimization of consumption. Rival notions help define forms of tamed hedonism and authenticity which adumbrate the boundary between normality and deviance within consumer culture. Consumption is revealed to be fundamentally related to value and value judgement: not merely a practical and symbolic activity but also, and fundamentally, a moral activity through which subjectivity and collectivity are mutually shaped. Consumer cultures increasingly depend on the development of complex mechanisms of coding and decoding of value and quality. This dynamic involves not only economic, but also moral assessments, reflecting contemporary societal changes and challenges to conventional moral orders. The paper therefore concludes by exploring the theory of conventions that was developed precisely to focus on the valorization processes that take place within consumer culture. By critically analyzing the theory of conventions the paper explores how it may offer a pragmatic framework that puts the action of actors at the center while assigning importance to the moral justifications that actors provide in support of their actions. This exploration contributes to current sociological theory on the moral dimensions of social life, addressing the issue of how collective moralities shape and are shaped by individual and group practices within consumption. In this way, the theory of conventions aims to overcome the limits of economic reductionism in which the actor is postulated as rational and sovereign and grafts an affective and moral component to the heart of economic activity.