McCracken

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Culture and Consum ption: A TheoreticalAccount of the S tructure and M ovement of

the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods

GRANT McCRACKEN

Cultural meaning in a consumer society moves ceaselessly from one location toanother. n the usual trajectory cultural meaning moves first from the culturallyconstituted v oM to consumer goods and then from these goods to the individualconsumer. Several instruments are responsible for this movement: advertising thefashion system and four cons umption rituals. This article analyzes the movementof cultural meaning theoretically showing b oth where cultural meaning is residentin the contemporary North American consumer system and the means by whichthis meaning is transfen-ed from one location in this system to another.

C onsumer goods have a significance that goes beyond their utilitarian character and commercial

value. This significance rests largely in their ability tocarry and communicate cultural meaning (Douglas andIsherwood 1978; Sahlins 1976). During the last decade,a diverse body of scholars has made the cultural significance of consumer goods the focus of renewed academic study (Belk 1982; Bronner 1983; Felson 1976;Furby 1978; Graum ann 1974-1975; Hirschman 1980;Holman 1980; Leiss 1983; Levy 1978; McCracken1985c; Prown 1982; Quimby 1978; Rodman and Phi

libert 1985; Schlereth 1982; Solomon 1983). Thesescholars have established a subfield extending acrossthe social sciences that now devo tes itself with increasingclarity and thoroughness to the study of person-objectrelations. In this article, I propose to contribute a theo-retical perspective to this em erging subfield by showingthat the meaning carried by goods has a mobile qualityfor which prevailing theories make no allowance.

A great limitation of present approach es to the studyof the cultural meaning of consum er goods is the failureto observe that this meaning is constantly in transit.Cultural m eaning flows continually between its severallocations in the social world, aided by the collective

and individual efforts of designers, producers, advertis-ers, and consumers. There is a traditional trajectors- tothis movement. Usually, cultural meaning is drawnfrom a culturally constituted world and transferred to

• Grant McCracken is Assistant Professor Dep anm ent of Con-sumer Studies University ofG uelp h Guelph Ontario Canada NIG2WI . The author thanks the following individuals for their contri-bution to the paper: Michael Ames Duncan Joy Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins. K.O.L. Burridge and the anonymous reviewers of this Jour-nal.

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a consumer good. Then the meaning is drawn from theobject and transferred to an individual consumer. Inother words, cultural meaning is located in three places:the culturally constituted world, the consumer good,and the individual consum er, and moves in a trajectory'at two points of transfer: world to good and good toindividual. The Figure summarizes this relationship. Inthis article propose to analyze this trajectory of mean-ing, taking each of its stages in turn.

Appreciating the mobile quality of cultural meaningin a consumer society should help to illuminate two

aspects of consumption in modern society. First, sucha perspective encourages us to see consumers and consumer goods as the way-stations of meaning. In thisman ner, we focus on structural and dynam ic propertiesof consumption that have not always been emphasized.Second, the trajectory perspective asks us to see suchphenomena as advertising, the fashion world, and consumption rituals as instruments of meaning movement.We are encouraged to acknowledge the presence of alarge and powerful system at the heart of modern consumer society that gives this society some of its coher-ence and flexibility even as it serves as a constant sourceof incoherence and discontinuity. In sum , this perspec-tive can help to dem onstrate some of the full complexitof current consumption behavior and to reveal in amore detailed way just what it is to be a consumersociety.

LOCATIONS OF CULTURALMEANING: THE CULTURALLY

CONSTITUTED WORLDThe original location of the cultural meaning that

ultimately resides in consumer goods is the culturally

Cc JOU RNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH • Vol. 13 • June 1986

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72 THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

FIGURE

MOVEMENT OF MEANING

Culturally Constituted World

Advertising FashionSystem

FashionSystem

Consumer Goods

Possession

Ritual

Exchange

Ritual

Grooming

Ritual

Divestment

Ritual

Individual Consumer

KEY: I I Location of Meaning

— ^ Instrument of Meaning Transfer

constituted world. This is the world of everyday expe-rience in which the phenomenal world presents itselfto the individual's senses fully shaped and constitutedby the beliefs and assumptions of his/her culture. Cul-ture constitutes the phenomenal world in two ways.First, culture is the len s through which the individualviews phenomena; as such, it determines how the phe-nomena will be apprehended and assimilated. Second,culture is the blue print ofhum an activity, determin-ing the co-ordinates of social action and productive ac-tivity, and specifying the behaviors and objects that issuefrom both. s a lens, culture determines how the worldis seen. s a blueprint, it determines how the world willbe fashioned by human effort. In short, culture consti-tutes the world by supplying it with meaning. Thismean ing can be characterized in terms of two concepts:cultural categories and cultural principles.

Cultural CategoriesCultural categories are the fundamental coordinates

of mean ing (M cCracken 1985a), representing the basicdistinctions that a culture uses to divide up the phe-nomenal world. For instance, all cultures specify cat-egories of time. In our culture these categories includean elaborate system that can discriminate units as fineas a secon d and as vast as a mi llenni um . Our cul-ture also makes less precise but no less significant dis-tinctions between leisure and work time, sacred andprofane tim e, and so on . Cultures also specify ca tegoriesof space. In our culture these categories include mea-sureme nt and occ asio n. Cultures also segment theflora, fauna, and landscape of natural and supernaturalworlds into categories. Perhaps the most imp ortant cat-

egories are those that cultures create in the humancommunity—the distinctions of class, status, gendeage, and occupation.

Cultural categories of time, space, nature, and personmake up the vast body of categories, creating a systemof distinctions that organizes the phenomenal world

Each culture establishes its own special vision of thworld, thus rendering the understandings and rules appropriate to one cultural context preposterously inappropriate in another. A specific culture makes a privileged set of terms, within which virtually nothing appears alien or unintelligible to the individual membeof the culture and outside of which there is no orderno system, no safe assumption, and no ready comprehension. In sum, by investing the world with its owparticular meaning, culture cons titutes the world. Iis from a world so constituted that the meaning destinefor consumer goods is drawn.

Cultural Categories in ContemporaryNorth America

It is worth noting that cultural categories in presenday North America appear to have unique characteristics. First, they possess an indeterminacy that is nonormally evident in other ethnographic circumstancesFor instance, cultural categories of person are markedby a persistent and striking lack of clarity, as are culturacategories of age. Second, they possess an apparen elective quality. Devoted as it is to the freedom othe individual, contemporary' North American societpermits its members to declare at their own discretionthe cultural categories they presently occupy. Exercisinthis freedom, teenagers declare themselves adultsmem bers of the working class declare themselves middlclass, the old declare themselves young, and so on. Category membership, which in most cultures is morstrictly specified and policed, is in our own society muchmore a matter of individual choice. In our culture, individuals are to a great extent what they claim to beeven when these claims are, by some sober sociologicareckoning, implausible.

We must note a third characteristic of cultural categories in contemporary North America: they are subject to constant and rapid change. The dynamic qualityof present day North American cultural categorieplainly adds to their indeterminacy. More importanthowever, this dynamism also makes our cultural categories subject to the manipulative efforts of the individual. Social groups can seek to change their place inthe categorical scheme, w hile m arketers can seek to establish or encourage a new cultural category of person(e.g., the teenager, the yup pie ) in order to create anew market segment. Cultural categories in contemporary North America are subject to rethinking andrearrangement by several parties.

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The Substantiation of Cultural Categories

Cultural categories are the conceptual grid of a cul-turally constituted world. They determine how thisworld will be segmented into discrete, intelligible parcelsand how these parcels will be organized into a largercoherent system. For all their importance, however,cultural categories have no substantial presence in theworld they organize. They are the scaffolding on whichthe world is hung and are therefore invisible. But cul-tural categories are constantly substantiated by humanpractice. Acting in conformity with the blueprint ofculture, the members of a community are constantlyrealizing categories in the world. Individuals con tinuallyplay out categorical distinc tions, so that th e world theycreate is made consistent with the world they imagine.In a sense, the m embers of a culture are constantly en-gaged in the construction—the constitution—of theworld they live in.

One of the most important ways in which culturalcategories are substantiated is through a culture's ma-terial objects. As we shall see in a moment, objects arecreated according to a culture's blueprint and to thisextent, objects render the categories of this blueprintmaterial and substantial. Thus, objects contribute tothe construction of the culturally constituted worldprecisely because they are a vital, tangible record ofcultural meaning that is otherwise intangible. Indeed,it is not too much to say that objects have a perfor-m ative function (Austin 19 63;Tam biah 1977) insofaras they give cultural meaning a concreteness for theindividual th at it would not otherwise have. The culturalmeaning that has organized a world is made a visible,demonstrable part of that world through goods.

The process by which a culture makes its culturalcategories manifest has been studied in some detail byanthropologists. Structural anthropology has supplieda theoretical scheme for this study, and several subspe-cialties, such as the anthropologies of art, clothing,housing, and material culture, have supplied areas ofparticular investigation. As a result of this work, thereis now a clear theoretical understanding of the way inwhich linguistic and especially nonlinguistic media ex-press cultural categories (Barthes 1967; deSaussure1966; Levi-Strauss 1963, p. 116; Sahlins 1976). Thereis also a wide range of empirical investigation into theareas of spatial organization (Doxtater 1984), houseform (Bourdieu 1973; Cunningham 1973), art (Fernan-dez 1966; Greenberg 1975), clothing (Adams 1973;McCracken 1986; Schwarz 1979), ornam ent (Drewal1983). technology (Lechtman and Merrill 1977), andfood (Ap padurai 1981; Douglas 1971; Ortner 1978).This study of material culture has helped to show howthe world is furnished with material objects that reflectand contribute to its cultural constitution—how cul-tural categories are substantiated.

The S ubstantiation of Cultural Categoriesin Goods

Goods may be seen as an opportunity to express thecategorical scheme established by a culture. G oods arean opportunity to make culture m aterial. Like any otherspecies of material culture, goods allow individuals todiscriminate visually among culturally specified cate-gories by encoding these categories in the form of setof material distinctions. Categories of person dividedinto parcels of age, sex, class, and occupation can berepresented in a set Of material distinctions by meansof goods. Categories of space, time, and occasion canalso be reflected in this medium of communication.Goods help substantiate the order of culture.

Several studies have examined the way in which goodsserve in this substantiatio n. Sahlins' study (1976) of thesymbolism of North American consumer goods ex-amine s food and clothing system s and shows theircorrespondence to cu ltural categories of person. Levy's(1981) study of the correspondence between food typesand cultural categories of sex and age in American so-ciety is anothe r excellent illustration of the way in whichone can approach the demographic information carriedin goods from a structuralist point of view. Both of thesestudies demonstrate that the order of goods is modelledon the order of culture. Both studies also demonstratethat much of the meaning of goods can be traced backto the categories into which a culture segments theworld. The substantiation of class categories by con-sumer goods has been considered by Belk, Mayer, andBahn (1981), Coleman (1983), Davis (1956), Form and

Stone (1957), Goffman (1951). Sommers (1963), V er-shure, Magel, and Sadalla (1977), and Warner and Lunt(1941). The substan tiation of gender categories has beenless well examined but appears to be drawing morescholarly attention (Allison et al. 1980; Belk 1982;Hirschman 1984; Levy 1959). The substa ntiation of gecategories also appears to be receiving more attention(Disman 1984; Olson 1985; Sherman and Newm an1977-1978; Unruh 1983).

Cultural PrinciplesCultural meaning also consists of cultural principles.

In the case of principles, meaning resides in the ideasor values that determine how cultural phenomena areorganized, evaluated, and construed, tf cultural cate-gories are the result of a culture's segmentation of theworld into discrete parcels, cultural principles are theorganizing ideas by which the segmentation is per-formed. Cultural principles are the charter assumptionsthat allow all cultural phenomena to be distinguished,ranked, and interrelated. As the orienting ideas forthought and action, cultural principles find expressionin every aspect of social life, goods not least of all.

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Culturat principles, like cultural categories, are sub-stantiated by material culture in general and consumergoods in particular. It is worth observing that culturalcategories and cultural principles are mutually presup-posing, and their expression in goods is necessarily si-multaneous. Therefore, goods are incapable of signi-

fying one without signifying the other. When goodsshow a distinction between two cultural categories, theydo so by encoding some thing of the principle accordingto which the two categories have been distinguished.Thus, the clothing that distinguishes between men andwomen or b>etween high and low classes also revealssomething of the na ture of the differences that are sup-posed to exist between these categories (McCracken1985c). Clothing communicates both the supposed delicacy of women and strength of men or boththe supposed refinem ent of a higher class and vul-garity of a lower one. Apparently, the categories ofclass and sex are never communicated without this in-dication of how and why they are to be distinguished.The world of goods, unlike that of language, never en-gages in a simple signalling of difference. In fact, goodsare always more forthcoming and more revealing. Inthe world of goods, signs are always, in a sense, moremotivated and less arbitrary than in the world of lan-guage.

Cultural principles in contemporary North Americahave the same indeterminate, changeable, electivequality that cultural categories do. Such principles as n atu ralism can fall into disrepute in one decade, onlyto be rehabilitated and advanced to a new place of im-portance in another, as occurred in the 1960s. Theprinciple of disha rmo ny that the punk aesthetic findsso useful was once not a principle but merely the termfor phenomena that had somehow escaped the suc-cessful application of another principle. The ethno-graphic literature on the meaning of objects as principlemay be found in Adams (1973), Drewal (1983), Fer-nandez (1966), and McCracken (1982a). Substantiveliterature that shows the presence and nature of themeaning of objects as principle in contem porary NorthAmerican society is not abundant. Levy (1981) makespassing reference to this question, as does Sahlins(1976), and the idea is implicitly treated in th e work ofLohof 1969) on the meaning carried by the Marlborocigarette. The idea also surfaces in the attempt of so-ciologists to make objects an index of status and class.For example, Laumann and House (1970) sought toestablish the meaning of household f^urniture and re-sorted to the principles of m od ern and traditio nal.Felson in his study of m ateri al life styles (1976) pos-ited something called a bric-a-brac factor while Davis(1958) coined the term Bau haus Japan esey to char-acterize a certain principle of interior design. The prin-ciple of scien ce (or, more exactly, the concern fortechnical m astery of nature and the confidence that h u-man affairs can be benignly transformed through tech-

nological inno vation ) was a favorite motif of the kitcheappliances and automobiles in 1950s and 1960s NortAmerica (Csikszentimihalyi and Rochberg-Halto1981, p. 52). Scholars in the material culture arm oAmerican studies and art history have made the monotable contribution here (Quimby 1978; Schleret

1982). Prown (1980) and Cohen (1982), for instanchave examined the principles evident in American funiture.

It is plain in any case that, like cultural categoriecultural principles are substantiated by consumer goodand these goods, so charged, help make u p the culturalconstituted world. Both cultural categories and priciples organize the phenomenal world and the efforof a comm unity to manipulate this world. Goods sustantiate both categories and principles and therefoenter into the culturally constituted world as both tobject and objectification of this world. In short, gooare both the creations and the creators of the cultural

constituted world.

INSTRUMENTS OF MEANINGTRANSFER: WORLD TO GOOD

Meaning first resides in the culturally constituteworld. To become resident in consum er goods, meaningmust be disengaged from this world and transferred goods. The present section proposes to examine two the institutions that are now used as instruments meaning transfer: advertising, and product design practiced in the fashion system.

Advertising

Advertising works as a potential method of meanintransfer by bringing the consumer good and a reprsentation of the culturally constituted world togethwithin the frame of a particular advertisement. Thcreative director of an advertising agency seeks to conjoin these two elements in such a way that the viewereader glimpses an essential similarity between themWhen this symbolic equivalence is successfully estalished, the viewer/reader attributes to the consumgood certain properties s/he know s exist in the culturalconstituted world. The icnown properties of the cultur-ally constituted world thus come to reside in the unknown properties of the consumer good and the transfof meaning from world to good is accomplished.

The mechanics of such a complicated process deservmore detailed exposition. The creative director is cocerned with effecting the successful conjunction of twelements, one of which is specified by a client. In mocases, the client gives the director a con sumer good, thphysical properties an d packaging of which are fixeand not subject to manipulation. The second elemen

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the representation of the culturally constituted world,is constrained and free in almost equal proportions. Theclient, sometimes drawing on marketing research andadvice, will specify the properties being sought for theconsumer good. Armed with these specifications, thecreative director now enjoys a wide range of discretion-

ary control. Subject only to th e negative constraints ofbudgetary limitations and the positive constraints of

continuous brand image, the director is free to deliverthe desired symbolic properties in any one of a nearlyinfinite n um ber of ways.

This delivery process consists of a lengthy and elab-orate series of choices (Dyer 1982; McCracken 1984;Sherry 1985; W illiamson 1978). The first choice is adifficult one. The director must identify with sufficientclarity for his/her own purposes the properties tha t aresought for the good in question. This procedure some-times results in a period of complicated discourse be-tween client and director where the parties alternately

lead and follow one another into a sharpened appre-ciation of the properties sought for the consum er good.In any case, the advertising firm will enter into its ownconsultative process in order to establish clarity suffi-cient for its own purposes. The second choice in thedelivery process is equally difficult but perhaps lessconsultative. The director m ust decide where the prop-erties desired for the ad reside in the culturally consti-tuted world. The director has at his/her disposal a vastarray of possibilities from which to choose. Place mustbe selected, and the first choice here is whether the adwill have a fantasy setting or a naturalistic one. If thelatter is chosen, it must be decided whether it will be

an interior or an exterior setting, an urban or rurallandscape, or a cultivated or untamed environment.Time oi day and time of year must also be chosen. Ifpeople are to appear in the advertisement, their sex,age. class, status, and occupation must be selected andtheir clothing and body postures and affective statesspecified (Goffman 1979). These are the pieces of theculturally constituted world that can be evoked inthe ad.

It must be noted that this selection process can beperformed more o r less well, according to the skill andtraining of the director. There is no simple route fromthe desired properties for the consumer good to the

pieces of the culturally constituted world that can evokethem in the advertisement. As members of the adver-tising profession point out, this is a creative processwhere the most appropriate selections for the adver-tisement are not so much calculated as glimpsed. Im-precision and error in this creative process are not onlypossible but legion. It must also be noted that the processof selection, because it is creative, proceeds at uncon-scious as well as conscious levels. Directors are not al-ways fully cognizant o fhow and why a selection is m ade,even when this selection presents itself as compellingand necessary (e.g., Arlen 1980, pp. 99, 119).

In sum, the director must choose from among alter-natives that have been created by the network of culturalcategories and principles that constitute a culture'sworld. The chosen alternatives will reflect those cate-gories and principles th at a director decides most closelyapproximate the meaning that the client seeks for the

product. Once these two choice processes are complete,a third set of choices must be mad e. The director mustdecide just how the culturally constituted world is tobe portrayed in the advertisement. This process consistsof reviewing all of the objects that substantiate the se-lected meaning and then deciding which of these objectswill be used to evoke this meaning in the advertisement.Finally, the director must decide how to present theproduct in its highly contrived context. Photographicand visual conventions will be exploited to give theviewer/reader the opportunity to glimpse an essentialequivalence between the two elem ents of world and ob-ject. The director must bring these two elements into a

conjunction that encourages a metaphoric identificationof sameness by the would-be consumer. W orld and goodmust seem to enjoy a special harmony—must be seento go together. When the viewer/reader glimpses thissameness (after one or many exposures to the stim uli),the process of transfer has taken place. Meaning hasshifted from the culturally constituted world to theconsumer good. This good now stands for a culturalmeaning of which it was previously innocent.

Visual images and verbal material appear to assumea very particular relationship in this transfer process.It is chiefly the visual aspect of an advertisement thatconjoins the world and the object when a meaning

transfer is sought. Verbal ma terial serves chiefly as akind of prompt that instructs the viewer/reader in thesalient properties that are supposed to be expressed bythe visual part of the advertisement. Text (especiallyheadlines) makes explicit what is already implicit in theimage. Text provides instructions on how the visualpart of the advertisement is to be read. The verbal com-ponent allows the director to direct the viewer/reader'sattention to exactly those meaningful properties thatare intended for transfer (cf., Barthes 1983, pp. 33-39;Dyer 1982, pp. 139-182 ; Garfinkle 1978; Moeran1985).

All of this must now be successfully decoded by theviewer/reader. It is worth emphasizing that the viewer/reader is the final autho r in the process of transfer. Thedirector brings the world and the consumer good intoconjunction and then suggests their essential similarity.It is left to the viewer/reader to see this similarity andeffect th e transfer of meaningful properties. To this ex-tent, the view er/reader is an essential participant in theprocess of meaning transfer, as Williamson (1978, pp.40-70) notes. The viewer/reader must complete thework of the director.

Advertising is a conduit through which meaningconstantly pours from the culturally constituted world

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to consumer goods. Through advertising, old and newgoods continually give up old meanings and take onnew ones. As active participants in this process, theviewer/reader is kept informed of the present state andstock of cultural m eaning that exists in con sumer goods.To this extent, advertising serves as a lexicon of cu rrent

cultural meanings. In large part, advertising maintainsa consistency between what Sahlins calls the orde r ofculture and the order of goods (1976, p. 178).

The Fashion SystemThe fashion system is less frequently observed, stud-

ied, and understood as an instrument of meaningmovement, yet this system also serves as a means bywhich goods are systematically invested and divestedof meaningful properties. The fashion system is asomewhat more complicated instrument for meaningmovement than advertising. In the case of advertising,

movement is accomplished by the efforts of an adver-tising agency to unhook meaning from a culturallyconstituted world and transfer it to a consumer goodby means of an advertisemen t. In the case of the fashionsystem, the process has more sources of meaning, agentsof transfer, and media of communication. Some of thisadditional complexity can be captured by noting thatthe fashion world works in three distinct ways to transfermeaning to goods.

In one capacity, the fashion system performs a trans-fer of meaning from the culturally con stituted world toconsumergoods that is remarkabiy similar in characterand effect to the transfer performed by advertising. Thesame effort to conjoin aspects of the world and a con-sumer good s evident in magazines or newspapers, andthe same process of glimpsed similarity is sought after.In this capacity, the fashion system taices new styles ofclothing or home furnishings and associates them withestablished cultural categories and principles, movingmeaning from the culturally constituted world to theconsumer good. This is the simplest aspect of themeaning-delivery capacity of the fashion system (andironically, the one that Barthes (1983) found so per-plexing and difficult to render plain).

In a second capacity, the fashion system actually in-vents new cultural meanings in a modest w ay. This in-vention is undertaken by opinion leaders who helpshape and refine existing cultural meaning, encouragingthe reform of cultural categories and principles. Theseare distant opinion leaders: individuals who by virtueof birth, beauty, or accomplishment are held in highesteem. These distant opinion leaders are sources ofmeaning for individuals of lesser standing. In fact, ithas been suggested that the innovation of meaning isprompted by the imitative appropriations of those oflow standing (McCracken 1985c; Simm el 1904). Clas-sically, the high-standing individuals com e from a con-ventional social elite: the upper classes. These classes.

for instance, originated the preppie loo k that has recently trickled down so widely and deeply. More recently, opinion leaders have come from a group of unashamedly nouveau riche characters who now dom inattelevision in evening soap operas such as D all as and Dy nasty and who appear to have influenced the con

sumer and lifestyle habits of so many North AmericansMotion picture and popular music stars, revered fotheir status, their beauty, and sometimes their talentalso form a relatively new group of opinion-leaders. Alof these new opinion leaders invent and deliver a specieof meaning that has been largely fashioned from theprevailing cultural coordinates established by culturacategories and cultu ral principles. These op inion leaderare permeable to cultural inn ovation s, changes in stylevalue, and attitude, which they then pass along to thesubordinate parties who im itate them .

In a third capacity, the fashion system engages in theradical reform of cultural meanings. Some part of the

cultural meaning of western industrial societies s alwayssubject to constant and thoroughgoing change. Thiradical instability of meaning is due to the fact thatwestern societies are, in the language of Claude Levi-Strauss (1966, pp. 233 -234 ). ho t societies. Westernsocieties willingly accept, indeed encourage, the radicachanges that result from deliberate human effon andthe effect of anonymous social forces (Braudel 1973p. 323; Fox and Lears 1983; McC racken 1985dMcKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb 1982). As a resultcultural m eaning in a hot, western, industrial, complexsociety is constantly undergoing systematic chang e. Incontradistinction to virtually all ethnographic prece

dent, members of such a society live in a world thatis deliberately and continually being transformed(McCracken 1985b). Indeed, it is no exaggeration tosay that hot societies demand change and depend on ito drive certain economic, social, and cultural sectorin their world (cf.. Barber and Lobel 1953; Fallers 1961).The fashion system serves as one of the conduits tocapture and move highly innovative cultural meaning

The groups responsible for the radical reform of cul-tural meaning are those existing at the margins of so-ciety, e.g., hippies, punks, orgays(BIumb erg 1974; Field1970; Meyersohn and Katz 1957). Such groups inventa much more radical, innovative kind of culturalmeaning than their high-standing partners in meaningdiffusion leadership. Indeed, such innovative groupsrepresent a departure from the culturally constitutedconventions of contemporary North American societyThey illustrate the peculiarly western tendency to tol-erate dramatic violations of cultural norms. Thesegroups redefined cultural categories, if only through thenegative process of violating such cultural categories asage and status (hippies and punks), or gender (gays).The redefined cultural categories and a number of at-tendant cultural principles have now entered the cul-tural mainstream. The innovative groups become

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CULTURE AND CONSUMPTION

me aning suppliers even when they are devoted tooverturning the established order (e.g., hippies) or aredetermined not to allow their cultural inventions to beabsorbed by the mainstrea m, (e.g., punks ; cf., Hebdige1979; Martin 1981).

If the sources of cultural meaning are dynamic andnumerous, so are the agents who gather up culturalmeaning and effect its transfer to consumer goods. Inthe case of the fashion system, the agents form two m aincategories: (1) product designers, and (2) fashion jou r-nalists and social observers. Product designers maysometim es be the very conspicuous individuals w ho es-tablish themselves as arbiters of clothing design in fash-ion centers such as Paris or Milan, and who surroundthemselves with a cult of personality. Other productdesigners, e.g., architects and interior designers, some-times achieve a roughly comparable stature and exertan equally international influence (Kron 1983). Moreoften, however, they are unknown outside their own

industries (Clark 1976; Meikle 1979; Pulos 1983). Thedesigners of Detroit automobiles are a case in pointhere, as are the product developers in the furniture andappliance industries. (Individuals such as RaymondLoewy are exceptions that prove the rule.)

The second category of agents consists of fashionjournalists and social observers. Fashion journalists maybelong to the print or film media and may have a highor a low profile. Social observers may be journalistswho study and document new social developments—e.g.. Lisa Birnbach (1980), Kennedy Fraser (1981), TomWolfe (1970), Peter York (1980). or they may be aca-demics who have undertaken a roughly similar inquiry

from a somewhat different point of view—e.g., RolandBarthes (1972). and Christopher Lasch (1979). Marketresearchers are beginning to serve in this capacity aswell—e.g., John Naisbett (1982) Arnold Mitchell(1983), and possibly, John Molloy (1977).

These groups share a relatively equal division of labor.Journalists perform their part of the enterprise by serv-ing as gate keepers of sort. They review aesthetic, so-cial, and cultural innovations as these first appear andthen classify the innovations as either important ortrivial. In this respect, journalists resemble the gate-keepers in the art (Becker 1972) and music (Hirsch1972) worlds. Journalists are supposed to observe as

best they can the whirling mass of cultural innovationand decide what is ephemeral and what will endure.After they have completed their difficult winnowingprocess, journalists engage in a dissemination processto make their decisions known. It must be admittedthat everyone in the diffusion chain (Rogers 1983) playsa gatekeeping role and helps to influence the tastes ofindividuals looking for opinion leadership. Journalistsare especially im portan t because they m ake their influ-ence felt even before an innovation passes to its earlyado pters (Baumgarten 1 975; Meyersohn and Katz1957; Polegato and Wall 1980).

When journalists have identified genuine innova-tions, product designers begin the task of drawingmeaning into the mainstream and investing it in con-sumer goods. The product designer differs from the ad-vertising agency director in that s/he transforms notonly the symbolic properties of a consumer good but

also its physical properties. Apart from fashion andtrade shows (which reach only some potential consum -ers), the product designer does not have a meaning-giving context such as the advertisement where s/hecan display the consumer good. Instead, the consumergood will leave the designer's hands and enter any con-text the consumer choo ses. Product design is the m eansa designer has to convince the co nsum er th at a specificobject possesses a certain cultural meaning. The objectmust leave the designer's hands with its new symbolicproperties plainly displayed in its new physical prop-erties.

The designer, like the agency director, depends on

the consumer to supply th e final act of association andeffect the meaning transfer from world to object. Butunlike the agency director, the product designer doesnot have at his/her disposal the highly managed, rhe-torical circumstances of an advertisement to encourageand direct this meaning transfer. The designer can notinform the consumer of the qualities intended for theobject; these qualities must be self-evident in the object,so the consum er can effect the meaning transfer for h im /herself. Therefore, it is necessary that the consumerhave access to the same sources of information aboutnew fashions in meaning that the designer has. Thejournalist makes this information available to the con-

sumer so that s/he can identify the cultural significanceof the physical properties of new object. In short, thedesigner relies on the journalist at the beginning andthen again at the very end of the meaning transfer pro-cess. The journalist supplies new meaning to the de-signer as well as to the recipient of the designer's work.In this way, both advertising and the fashion systemare instruments for the transfer of meaning from theculturally constituted world to consumer goods. Theyare two of the means by which meaning is invested inthe object code. It is thanks to them that the objects ofour world carry such a richness, variety, and versatilityof meaning and can serve us so variously in acts of self

definition and social communication.

LOCATIONS OF CULTURALMEANING: CONSUMER GOODS

That consum er goods are the locus of cul tural mean -ing is too well-established a fact to need elaborate dem-onstration here. This is what Sahlins has to say aboutone product category—clothing (1976, p. 179):

Considered as a whole, the system of American clothingam oun ts to a very complex schem e of cultural categories

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and the relations between them, a veritable map—it doesnot exaggerate to say—of the cultural universe.

What can be said of clothing can be said of virtually allother high-involvement product categories and severallow-involvement ones. Clothing, transportation, food,housing exteriors and interiors, and adornment all serveas media for the expression of the cultural mea ning thatconstitutes our world.

That goods possess cultural meaning is sometimesevident to the consumer and sometimes hidden. Con-sumers may consciously see and manipulate such cul-tural meanings as the status of a consumer item. Justas often, however, individual consumers recognize thecultural meaning carried by consumer goods only inexceptional circumstances. For instance, consumerswho have lost goods because of burglary, sudden im-poverishm ent, or the divestment th at occurs with agingevidence a profound sense of loss and even mourning(Belk 1982, p. 185). The possession rituals about to bediscussed also suggest that th e meaningful prop erties ofconsumer goods are not always conspicuously evident1 a consum er, however much they serve to inform andcontrol his/her action.

It was observed at the beginning of this article thatthe last decade has seen an outpouring of work on thecultural significance of consumer goods. Indeed, thewealth of this literature reassures us that the study ofthe cultural meaning carried by goods is a flourishingacademic enterprise. None of this literature, however,addresses the question of the m obile quality of culturalmeaning, and we may wish to make this question anoperative assumption in the field. When we examine

the cultural m eaning of consumer goods, we may wishto determine where cultural meaning came from andhow it was transferred.

INSTRUMENTS OF MEANINGTRANSFER: GOOD TO CONSUMER

Thus far we have tracked the movement of culturalmeaning from the culturally constituted world to con-sumer goods and have considered the role of two in-struments in this process. We must now address howmeaning, now resident in consumergoods, moves fromthe consumer good into the life of the consumer. Inorder to describe this process, a second set of instru-ments of meaning transfer must be discussed. Theseinstruments appear to qualify as special instances of symbolic action or ritual (Munn 1973; Turner 1969).Ritual is a kind of social action devoted to the manip-ulation of cultural meaning for purposes of collectiveand individual communication and categorization.Ritual is an opportunity to affirm, evoke, assign, or re-vise the con ventional symbols and meanings of the cul-tural order. To this extent, ritual is a powerful and ver-satile tool for the man ipulation of cultural m eaning. In

the form of a classic rite of passage, ritual is used tmove an individual from one cultural category of persoto another, where s/he gives up one set of symboliproperties, e.g., those of a child, and takes up anothere.g., those ofan adult (Turner 1967; Van G ennep 1960Oth er forms of ritual are devoted to different social end

Some forms are used to give experien tial reality tcertain cultural principles and concepts (Tambia1977). Still other forms are used to create certain political contracts (McCracken 1982b). In short, ritual put to diverse ends in its manipulation of culturameaning. In contemporary North America, ritual used to transfer cultural meaning from goods to indviduals. Four types of rituals are used to serve this pupose: exchange, possession, grooming, and divestmenrituals. Each of these rituals represents a different stagin a more general process by which meaning is movefrom consumer good to individual consumer.

Exchange Rituals

In contemporary North American exchange rituals—especially Christmas and birthday rituals—one partchooses, purchases, and presents consumer goods tanother (Caplow 1982). This movement of goods is alspotentially a movement of meaningful properties. Oftethe gift-giver chooses a gift because it possesses thmeaningful properties s/he wishes to see transferred tthe gift-receiver. Th us, the w oman who receives a paticular kind of dress is also made the recipient of a paticular concept of herself as a woman (Schwartz 1967)The dress contains this concept and the giver invitethe recipient to define herself in its terms. Similarlmany of the contin uou s gifts that flow between parenand children are m otivated by precisely this notion . Thgifts to the child contain symbolic properties that thparent would have the child absorb (Furby 1978, p312-313).

The ritual of gift exchange establishes a potent meaof interpersonal influence. Gift exchange allows indviduals to insinuate certain symbolic properties inthe lives of a gift recipient and to initiate possibmeaning transfer. In more general terms, consumeacting as gift-givers a re made agents of meaning transfto the extent that they selectively d istribute goods wispecific properties to individuals who may or may nhave chosen them otherwise. The study of gift exchangwell established in the social sciences (Davis 197Mauss 1970; McCracken 1983; Sahlins 1972), is alreadyunderway in the field of consumer research (Belk 197and deserves further study. Attention must be given tthe choice process used by a giver to identify the giwith the cultural meanings s/he seeks to pass along the recipient. Attention must also be given to the sinificance of gift wrapping and presentation as well the context (time and place) in which gift presentatioare m ade. These aspects of̂ the dom estic ritual of g

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giving are vitally importa nt to the meaningful propertiesof the goods exchanged.

Possession Rituals

Consumers spend a good deal of time cleaning, dis-cussing, comparing, reflecting, showing off, and evenphotographing many of their possessions. Housewarm-ing parties sometimes provide an opportunity for dis-play, while the process of home perso naliz ation(Hirschman 1982, pp. 37-38; Kron 1983; Rapoport1968, 1982) especially serves as the occasion for muchcomparison, reflection, and discussion. Though theseactivities have an overt functionality, they all appearto have the additional effect of allowing the consumerto claim possession as his/her own. This claiming pro-cess is not a simple assertion of territoriality throughownership. Claiming is also an attempt to draw from

the object the qualities that it has been given by themarketing forces of the world of goods. This process ismost conspicuous when it fails to take place. For ex-ample, occasionally a consumer will claim that a pos-session—a car, house, article of clothing, or othermeaning-carr>ing good— never really seemed to be-long to me . There are certain goods that the consum erneVer successfully claims because s/he never success-fully claims their symbolic properties. The consumergood becomes a paradox: the consum er owns it withoutpossessing it; its symbolic properties remain imm ovable.

Normally, however, the individual successfully de-ploys possession rituals and manages to extract the

meaningful properties that have been invested in theconsumer good If the cultural meaning has been trans-ferred, consumers are able to use goods as markers oftime, space, and occasion. Consum ers draw on the abil-ity oH hese goods to discriminate between such culturalcategories as class, status, gender, age, occupation, andlifestyle. Since possession rituals allow the consumer totake possession of the meaning of a consumer good,these rituals help complete the second stage of the tra-jectory of the movem ent of cultural m eaning. As wehave seen, advertising agencies and the fashion worldmove cultural meaning from the culturally constitutedworld into a consumer good. Using possession rituals,individuals move cultural meaning out of their goodsand into their lives.

It is worth observing that possession rituals, especiallythose devoted to personalizing the object, almost seemto enact on a small scale, and for private pu rposes, theactivities of meaning transfer perf^ormed by the adver-tising agency. The act of personalizing is, in effect, anattempt to transfer meaning from the individual's ownworld to the newly obtained good. The new context inthis case is the individual's complement of consumergoods, which has assumed a personal as well as publicmeaning. Indeed, perhaps it is chiefly in this way thatan anonymous possession—manifestly the creation of

a distant, impersonal mass manufacturing process—isturned into a personal possession th at belongs to some-one and speaks for them. Perhaps it is in this mannerthat individuals create a personal world of goods thatreflects their own experience and concepts of self andworld. The meaning that advertising transfers to goods

is the meaning of the collectivity. The meaning thatpersonal gestures transfer to goods is the meaning ofthe collectivity as this meaning has been inflected bythe particular experience of the individual consumer.

Grooming RitualsIt is clear that some of the cultural meaning drawn

from goods has a perishable nature. As a result, theconsumer must draw cultural meaning out of his/herpossessions on a repeated basis. When a continua l p ro-cess of meaning transfer from goods to consumer isnecessary, the consumer will likely resort to a grooming

ritual. The purpose of this ritual is to take the specialpains necessary to insure that the special, perishableproperties resident in certain clothes, hair styles, andlooks are, as it were, coaxed out of their resident goodsand made to live, however briefly and precariously, inthe life of the individual consum er. The going ou trituals with which one prepares for an evening out aregood examples of this process. These rituals illustratethe time, patience, and anxiety with which an individualwill prepare him/herself for the special public scrutinyof a gala evening or dinner party. Gro om ing rituals armindividuals who are going ou t with the particularlyglamorous, exalted, meaningful properties that exist intheir best consumer goods. Once captured and maderesident in an individual, these meaningful propertiesgive him /her new powers of confidence, aggression, anddefense. The language with which advertisements de-scribe certain make-up, hair-styling goods, and clothingtacitly acknowledge the meaningful properties availablein goods that special groom ing rituals release.

Sometimes, however, it is not the consumer but thegood that must be groomed. T his occurs when the con-sumer cultivates the meaningful p roperties ofan objectin the object rather than coaxing out the properties inhim/herself. The extraordinary amounts of largely re-dundant time and energy lavished on certain automo-biles is perhaps the best case in point here (Myers 1985,p. 562). This type of grooming ritual supercharges theobject so that it, in tu rn, may transfer special heightenedproperties to an owner. Here again, the individual's rolein meaning investment is evident. The importance tothe consumer of cultivating consum er goods so that theycan release their meaningful qualities is most strikinglyhighlighted by the behavior of aging individuals. Sher-man and Newman report that the occupants of nursinghomes who regard themselves as being at the end ofthe line engage in a process of decathecting [removingthe emotional significance from] the significant objectin their lives (1977 -197 8, p. 188).

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In the field of consumer research, the study of ritualhas been significantly advanced by Rook (1984), whohas observed how much consumption behavior is rit-ualized and who has noted the value of studying con-sumption from a ritual perspective, and by Rook andLevy (1982), who have examined grooming ritual and

grooming prod uct sym bolism. It is clear that groomingrituals are one of the means by which ind ividua ls effecta transfer of symbolic properties. In grooming rituals,the meaning moves from consumer goods to the con-sumer. Grooming rituals help draw cultural meaningout of these goods and invest it in the c onsum er.

Divestment Rituals

Individuals who draw mean ing out of goods come toview these meaning sources in personal terms, asso-ciating goods with their own personal properties. Thepossible confusion between consumer and consumergood encourages the use of the divestment ritual. Di-vestment rituals are employed for two purposes. W henthe individual purchases a good that has been previouslyowned, such as a house or a car, the ritual is used toerase the meaning associated w ith the previous owner.The cleaning and redecorating of a newly purchasedhome, for instance, may be seen as an effort to removethe meaning created by the previous owner. Divestmentallows the new owner to avoid contact with the mean-ingful properties of the previous owner and to free upthe meaning p roperties of the possession, claiming themfor him/herself. The second divestment ritual takesplace when the individual is about to dispense with agood, either y giving it away or selling it. The consum erwill attempt to erase the meaning that has been investedin the good by association. In moments of candor, in-dividuals suggest that they feel a little strange aboutsomeone else wearing my old coa t. In mom ents of stillgreater candor, they will confess that they fear the dis-possession of personal meaning, a phenomenon thatresembles the merging of identities that sometimestakes place between transplant donors and recipients(Simmons, K lein, and S immons 1977, p. 68). Both rit-uals suggest a concern that the meaning of goods canbe transferred, obscured, confused, or even lost whengoods change ha nds (Douglas 1966). Therefore, goodsmust be emptied of meaning before being passed alongand cleared of meaning when taken on. W hat looks likesimple superstition is, in fact, an implicit acknowl-edgement of the moveable quality of the mea ning withwhich goods are invested.

In sum, personal ritua ls are variously used to transferthe meaning contained in goods to individual consum -ers. Exchange rituals are used to direct goods chargedwith certain meaningful properties to those individualsthe gift-giver supposes are needful of these properties.In an exchange ritual, the giver invites the receiver topartake of the properties possessed by the good. Pos-session rituals are practiced by an owner in order to

retrieve a good's meaningful properties. Possession rituals are designed to transfer a good's properties to itowner. Grooming rituals are used to effect the con tinuatransfer of perishable properties—properties likely tofade when possessed by the consumer. Grooming ritualallow the consum er to freshen the properties s/h

draws from goods. These rituals can also be used tomaintain and brig hten certain of the meaningfuproperties resident in goods. Finally, divestment ritualare used to empty goods of meaning so that meaningloss or meaning-contagion cannot take place. All othese rituals are a kind of microcosmic version of theinstruments of meaning transfer that move meaningfrom world to goods, since these rituals move meaningfrom goods to consumer.

LOCATIONS OF CULTURALMEANING INDIVIDUAL CONSUM ERS

Cultural meaning is used to define and orient theindividual in ways that we are only beginning to appreciate. It is clear that individuals living in a contemporary Western industrial culture enjoy a wide rangeof choice in the meaning they may draw from goodsIt was observed at the start of this article that contemporary North American culture leaves a great deal othe individual undefined. One of the ways individualsatisfy the freedom and fulfill responsibility of self def

inition is through the systematic appropriation of thmeaningful properties of goods. Plainly this task is notan easy one, nor is it always successful. Many individuals seek kinds of meaning from goods that do not exis

there. Others seek to appropriate kinds of meaningto which they are not, by some sober sociological reckoning, entitled. Still others attempt to constitute theilives only in te rms of the m eaning of goods. All of thesconsumer pathologies are evident in modern consumption behavior and all of them illustrate how the procesof meaning transfer can go wrong, to the cost of thindividual and society. In normal situations, howeverthe individual uses goods in an unproblematical ma nnerto constitute crucial parts of the self and the world. Thlogic, imperatives, and details of this process of self

and world construction through goods are enormouslyunderstudied and are only now attracting rigoroustudy. Our culture has studied its own beliefs and practices with a thoroughness and enthusiasm unheraldedin the ethnographic record. With the same thoroughnesand enthusiasm it has also made material possessionone of its most compelling preoc cupations. It is therefore doubly odd and unfortunate that the study of theuse of goods in the construction of self and world shouldhave suffered such prolonged and profound neglect.

SUMMARY

Only recently has the field of person-o bject relations escaped the limitations imposed upon it by it

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founding father, Thorstein Veblen. The field has begunto recognize that the cultural meaning carried by con-sumer goods is enormously more various and complexthan the Veblenian insistence on status was capable ofrecognizing. But now that the field has made this ad-vance, it might consider the possibility of another. It

might begin to take account of the alienable, moveable,manipulable quality of meaning. This article has soughtto encourage such a development by giving a theoreticalaccount of the structure and movement of the culturalmeaning of consumer goods. It has suggested thatmeaning resides in three locations: the culturally con-stituted world, the consumer good, and the individualconsumer Advertising, the fashion system, and con-sumer rituals have been identified as the means by whichmeaning is drawn out of, and transferred between, theselocations. Advertising and the fashion system movemeaning from the culturally constituted world to con-sumer goods, while consumer rituals move meaning

from the consumer good to the consumer. This is thetrajectory of the movement of cultural meaning inmodern developed societies.

[Received May 1985. Revised December 1985.]

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