Dialectics, Difference, and the Geographies of Consumption

In the current beginnings of the mapping of the consumer society there is an evident tension between political-economic and poststructuralist accounts of consumption. It has been suggested that a philosophy of difference does nothing more than mimic a capitalist ideology of choice; that it represents a levelling of philosophy to the vulgar status of consumerism. The counterposition asserts a lack of tolerance to difference inherent in the rationalism of Marxism, which ultimately adheres to production as its central, stabilizing, metaphysical concept. In examining such ideas we seek to ground judgmental positions with respect to the political status of consumption (and of production) in notions of collectivity and action. To this end we provide a brief discussion of the history of consumer cooperation as a political force. More generally, by elucidating the political potentialities of different philosophical approaches, which present themselves as opposites, we hope to interrupt—interminably and retroactively—the development of a geography of the consumer society which is simply additive to existing geographies of the productive society.