Petition to Create an ASA Section:
“The Sociology of Consumers and Consumption"
Please print, fill out, sign and mail this document
The place of consumption in social life has been a sociological concern for over a
century. Marx, Weber, Simmel and Veblen represent early, founding perspectives on
consumption. The rethinking and reformulating of their ideas constitute an important point of
departure for many fields, schools and approaches, including the Birmingham School, cultural
sociology/cultural studies, economic sociology, theory, social movements, children and youth,
aspects of environmental sociology and studies of postmodernism/post-Fordism. Consumption
figures in race, class, gender, age and sexual identities as well as in the political economy of
cities and neighborhoods through "development" and tourism. Further, changes in the locus of
production along with the globalizing tendencies of popular culture have positioned consumption
centrally in social policy, social punditry as well as social practice.
Consumption, although clearly intertwined with various fields of sociology, retains
distinctiveness as a field of inquiry. It cannot be reduced simply to being the result of production
or to that which occurs only at the moment of economic exchange. Rather, the making, desiring,
purchasing, displaying and exchanging of goods implicates a plethora of social identities,
practices, power relations and histories. Consumption is multifaceted and so also must be
approaches to understand its many forms, extensions and ramifications in and for social life..
A Section devoted to the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption in the American
Sociological Association will enable currently dispersed scholars to form a community of mutual
support and critique. The exchange of resources, information and ideas so necessary to the
scholarly vocation will be enhanced by an organizational body composed of and run by those
with similar interests.
By signing this petition, I certify that I am an ASA member and that I pledge to
join this Section as a dues-paying member for at least the next two membership
years once it commences.
Signature: __________________________________________________
Printed Name: ______________________________________________
Address/Affiliation:
You can sign this petition with
digital image of your actual
signature and email to
csrn2011@camden.rutgers.edu.
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OR
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Return by U.S. Mail
with original signature to:
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Consumer Studies Research Network
Department of Childhood Studies
Rutgers University
405-7 Cooper Street
Camden, NJ 08102
Email:
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Date:
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