Consuming Behaviour

© John Desmond

First published, January, 2026

Grianan Publishing,

John’s Brae,

Shrove, ROI, F93E7R9

Cover design © John Desmond (with thanks to Alan Gillies)

Consuming Behaviour

In memoriam

Eleanor MacDonald, 9/2/1991 - 18/9/2014

Preface

“You’re not writing a book are you?!” Not a question, but more of an accusation as a crime against the never-ending academic quest to be at the top of the league-table. Now that aspect of life is over and done with and thankfully appears in sepia tone, as master of my own schedule one might at least have expected me to have had the decency to write something short and comprehensible. Unfortunately, now that it is done this book is still far too long and yet remains unfinished, as a work in progress that has consumed more of my time than has been good for me and mine.

Although it bears the same title as that published in 2002, what follows is substantively different to the first incarnation as it partly realises my aim to write a comparative piece. Partly, because while there is some exposition of different explanations, it falls down in that too little time is spent on comparison between explanations, nor is there any sense of thematic development. Despite which even although it is simultaneously too long and too short, it is a start and now is the time at last to let this project go and put it to bed so I can get on with all those other things I planned to do.

It seems to be a common feature of aging that the older one gets the more pressing are one’s misgivings about one’s misdeeds and now I look back with some regret to my arrant expectation that the students who took my courses should rise to whatever challenge I threw at them. I thus owe those who attended MN4224, and the postgraduate class MN5406 from 2000 until 2015, more thanks than I can ever express for putting up with my demands. I should mention too that I often felt humbled by their enthusiastic engagement with the material, their flashes of insight and an occasional demonstration of brilliance that made my life as an academic truly worthwhile. Although in a sense this is dedicated to all of my former students, a major reason for completing this book was to fulfil a promise that I made to myself many years ago that if I ever finished it

I would dedicate it to Eleanor in memory of her unequalled courage, fortitude and quiet persistence, in the face of unimaginable odds. Especial thanks are also due to Douglas Holligan who was also a great contributor to MN4224, who many years ago kindly edited rough versions of some of the chapters. Finally, thanks to Stephen Murphy for letting me use his example of high speed motorcycling in chapter eight.

This book is self-published and so I must mention that I could not have done so without my neighbour Alan Gillies, whose help has proved invaluable, not only by helping set up the domain and suggesting how to post the material but also with tasks such as compiling a table of contents and in sharpening the cover design. Unfortunately, despite combing through it several times, because it is self-edited and despite my best efforts, the text remains full of mistakes. I will try to rectify mistakes and omissions if these are pointed out to me and so if you spot any then I would be grateful if you could please email me to jdbooks .

Thanks are also due to those members of the School of Management at the University of St Andrews who believed that academics should be given freedom to teach according to their interests unconstrained by the demands of bureaucracy, an approach that has sadly lapsed in today’s climate of endless oversight. While there I particularly remember Iain Munro and Tim Scott with whom I had many interesting discussions. Thanks also to Donncha Kavanagh, Pierre McDonagh Stephanie O’Donohoe, Alan Bradshaw, Stephen Dunne and Aliette Lambert for their support and also for others who have helped contribute to this work in years long gone. Finally, thanks of course to Fiona, for putting up with me.

5th February 2026

Table of Contents

Part I: The Consuming Individual in Space and Through Time

The two introductory chapters in Part One can be read alone, although they are designed to complement each other. Chapter one introduces the reader to the work of Norbert Elias who wrote of the increasing individualisation of life in the modern world. Elias’s work is further developed by considering three views of the late modern consumer; as entrepreneur of the self; narcissist and altruistic activist. Chapter two develops chapter one by discussing in more detail the arguments made by Max Weber and Michel Foucault concerning the role rationality in modernism. A second argument, based on Karl Marx, that late modern life is characterised by flux and disorder is influenced by the work of David Harvey.

Chapter One: The Consuming Individual

A key aim is to demonstrate how individuality is linked in complex ways to the social context. This is not acknowledged by the liberal ideal of homo economicus, which is so often taken as the unquestioned starting point for mainstream consumer behaviour texts. This ideal of the rational consumer does not emphasize uniqueness so much as rationality, equality and freedom of choice. This ideal image of consumers assumes that they act from their own volition, as independent, self-determining and self-conscious agents exercising freedom of choice in the marketplace by maximizing their assortment of goods. An important aim of this chapter is to persuade you that one should not assume rationality but rather that this is an achievement which is closely related to the social context. For similar reasons it aims to persuade you that one should not take the modern idea of the individual for granted.

Depending on the author’s point of view, the consumer is described as, self-controlled, lonely, anxious and prone to inner turmoil (Elias, 1994; James, 2007, 2008), egoistic, irreligious and altruistic (Beck & Beck, 2001; Inglehardt et al. 2006), or narcissistic, shallow, superficial, prone to grandiose fantasies and to rage when these are not realized (Barber, 2007; Twenge & Campbell, 2009). Clearly, it is difficult to envisage a person who can be all of these simultaneously and so you will have to make your mind up as to which description is the most convincing.

Four stories are used to illustrate different points of view and time periods. The story of Sir Gavin of Blair illustrates the individuality of the English medieval nobility. The second story moves to the modern period of the 1950s, featuring Laura Brown, who feels isolated and suicidal despite superficially living the American Dream. Laura’s story is used as a vehicle to illustrate the theory developed by Norbert Elias (1994), which explains the emergence of the modern individual as part of what he calls the civilizing process. Elias’s theory forms the basis for the subsequent discussion of two very different views of the late modern consumer, as illustrated through the story of Wai Ching. The first explanation argues that the late modern consumer is a narcissist, being highly competitive, exhibitionistic and manipulative of others. The argument, which is developed from a strand of modernization theory, is that the late modern consumer is better understood as an egocentric altruist. Finally the story of Yusuf is used to differentiate the needs-driven consumer from the late modern consumer.

Chapter two: Consuming Space and Time

This chapter revisits themes from chapter one to consider relations between space, time and consumption. The place of traditional community is described, where time is circular and reversible. This is contrasted with the rational ordering of modern spaces where time has the quality of an arrow that is projected from the past, through the present and towards the future. Modernization theory is discussed in this context in relation to the belief in progress, through the spread of forms of rationality in science, politics and economics.

The discussion of modernization theory forms the background to two very different critiques of capitalism, each of which likens it to a machine. The first critique on the rationalization of space is based on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber (1905). This explains how the modern market system employs bureaucratic organization to rationalize the uniqueness of traditional places into a series of modern spatial grids. Weber’s argument relating to bureaucracy is outlined and elaborated by referring to the contribution made by George Ritzer. Against the modernist idea that technology acts as a tool to serve humankind, the argument based on the rationalization of consumption is that technology is at best, problematic and at worst, dangerous, running ahead of human ability to contain it.

The second critique of modernization theory is based on Karl Marx, who described capitalism as a monstrous machine that pulverizes place, and compresses space through time, in its quest to devour the world. The critique from fetishism, which is our first topic for discussion focuses more on how the market operates to highlight the lure of commodities to consumers while hiding the exploitation of workers and natural resources that occurs in their production. The second argument focuses on David Harvey’s discussion of the transformative and massively disruptive power of capitalism, through the ‘annihilation of space through time’, which conceives capitalism as a dynamic process that must constantly grow by destroying spatial distance and by opening new spaces.

Part II. Evolutionary and Social Theories of Exchange

The aim of Part Two is to illustrate how different perspectives from evolutionary and social theory seek to explain the same processes and one chapter is allotted to discussion of each perspective. Discussion is organised using the template developed by the anthropologist Alan Page Fiske (1991).

The concepts in the two Figures apply different understandings to the same four behaviours, which are presumed universal. What anthropologists and sociologists describe as sharing, gift-exchange, hierarchy, and the market, are explained by evolutionary psychologists as kin selection, reciprocal altruism, costly signalling and market-pricing. While the concepts in the two Figures are explained more fully in the relevant chapters it is relevant to mention here that there is little commerce between the two ways of framing our understanding of exchange.

Doman-Specific Modules for Exchange
Kin Selection | Costly signalling (Sexual selection)
Reciprocal altruism | Market-pricing

The Four Elementary Forms of Sociality (Fiske, 1991).
Communal Sharing | Authority Ranking
Equality matching | Market-pricing

Chapter Three: Evolutionary Theories of Exchange

This chapter focuses on two broad explanations comprising on the one hand, the mainstream explanation based on kin-selection and reciprocal altruism and on the other, the minority explanation, based on multilevel selection. The mainstream “domain specific” explanation argues that those pre-human hominids from archaic societies who became our ancestors survived the struggle for existence during the Era of Evolutionary Adaptiveness (EEA), which occurred during the Pleistocene period (from 2.5 million to the onset of the Holocene 11,500 years ago), they developed an innate psychology, consisting of special modules for sharing and reciprocal exchange, which gave them an advantage over their fellow hominids. These are stored as algorithms which work as unconscious routines that are individually called up to address specific problems as they arise in the environment, very much in the way a jukebox selects a record.

The second broad theory discussed below is based on multilevel, or cultural group selection. This argues that kin selection and reciprocal altruism are insufficient to explain large-scale human cooperation. Theorists from this perspective posit that natural selection also works at the group level to explain the superiority of the hominids who became our ancestors as due to their development of cultural resources favouring cooperation over competition. In their view this explains why individuals readily sacrifice their own lives for the sake of the group. The ‘dark’ side of group selection is that given that; “organisms are frequently adapted to prey upon and compete aggressively with other organisms, so no less can be expected of groups.” (Sober & Wilson, 2000: 264). In this argument early cultural institutions linked to the development of religion add the extra dimension, beyond kinship, reputation and reciprocity, which is required to explain large-scale cooperation.

Chapter Four: Social Theories of Exchange

The anthropological literature is relevant to marketing scholars not only because it provides interesting and relevant theories, but also because its history reminds us to be humble and to reflect on our unknown prejudice. The ethnocentrism of authors, which considered Western culture to be advanced and Asia, primitive seems ludicrous today, yet it deeply influenced the judgements of early European researchers. For example, despite evidence to the contrary, it was believed that village exchange in India was a primitive form of communal gift-exchange. This mistaken interpretation had major repercussions, influencing the work of Karl Marx, amongst others. This draws attention to the powerful assumptions that guide our point of view. By framing others through the lens of our own unquestioned assumptions and thus constructing the other in our own image, we effectively block understanding.

This chapter discusses communal sharing, authority ranking, equality-matching and finally, market-pricing. Many argued that the crisis that began back in 2007, whose repercussions are still being felt today, through the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum was the end of capitalism, yet the capitalist market remains as the pre-eminent system for the organization of global exchange. Ironically, the markets were resorted to as the means to resolve the effects of massive financial market failure, as countries adopted the massive debts of banks considered too big to fail, in seeking to prevent an economic depression. The global market is pressingly real in its effects on all of us. Yet, as is explained in this chapter this massive machine did not simply spring into being, but was brought into being by human actions that provided the necessary legal framework and infrastructure to enable it to operate. Nor, as this chapter makes clear, does stand alone; as a mode of distribution, it is best understood in relation to its role.

Part III: Evolutionary, Social and Psychoanalytic Accounts

This section presents three theoretical perspectives that consider important questions pertaining to consumption. The evolutionary explanation from domain specificity asks about the kinds of problems confronted by humans during the Pleistocene period when, they argue, specific action programmes were developed to solve particular problems. The question of identity does not arise for these theorists except perhaps in relation to how all of these separate action programmes that operate sub-personally are combined into a unity of purpose at the personal level.

Social explanations which are discussed in chapter six explain identity as a product of language and culture. From an evolutionary perspective, these explanations are consistent with the argument that human intelligence is plastic and general purpose, as exemplified in the use of abstract processing through the operation of metaphor and metonymy. As members of a language community we quickly learn to understand the world in largely the same way as those who surround us, we are also trained to conform to the roles and identities prescribed for us within our culture together with the expectations that accompany such understanding. Key questions relate to the extent to which we passively conform to the roles and identities specified for us in advance by the social structure into which we are born, or act as agents to shape our own identities and destinies.

Culture is also extremely important to psychoanalytic understanding of identity which is explained in chapter eight. In evolutionary terms this is explained as a variant of cultural group selection. However psychoanalytic explanations go beyond this to focus on the clash between the ancient drives for the immediate satisfaction of desires and the societal demand for constraint.

Chapters Five (a) and Five (b): Evolutionary Explanations

The decision was reluctantly made to split this chapter into two parts, the first of which focuses on domain-specific arguments and the second on multilevel selection. No field has expanded more rapidly in the intervening years since the first edition of this book was published., Media interest exploded in April 14th 2003 following the announcement of the sequencing of the entire human genome. Some would have us believe that discovery is of equal significance to 1439 when the first Bible rolled out from Gutenberg’s press, the first of May 1844, when news was first dispatched by electric telegraph, or the day in 1990 when a photograph from the Voyager spacecraft showed Earth as a tiny pinprick in the vastness of space. The evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers writing in the forward to Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene tells us that; “The chimpanzee and the human share about 99.5% of their evolutionary history, yet most human thinkers regard the chimp as a malformed, irrelevant, oddity whilst seeing themselves as stepping-stones to the Almighty”. (Trivers, 1976: v). Whilst perhaps the greatest accomplishment of evolutionary thought, is to bring humans down to earth by reminding us of our continuity with other animals, it offers much more than that.

Chapter Five (a): Evolution: Domain Specificity

This chapter extends discussion of domain-specificity from chapter three to address the age-old question as to whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder.? This forms the preamble to consideration of domain-specific arguments on sexual selection and beauty which are highly relevant to the context of consumption and also, as you might imagine, are occasionally somewhat controversial! Sexual selection is discussed in relation to long term mating strategies involving the search for ‘honest signals’ of fitness. Questions of beauty and facial attraction are then discussed in relation to “averageness” of facial characteristics and skin tone ,and the question is asked as to whether beautiful people are also good? There is than a brief discussion of short-term mating strategies, following which attention turns to Foxall’s general theory of intentional behaviourism.

Chapter Five (b) Multilevel Selection

Chapter 5 (b) builds on arguments from multilevel selection in chapter three to argue that evolution works towards greater complexity, from genes to cells, multicellular organisms and the collections of multicellular organisms we refer to as social groups.¹ Each level of organization is governed by the iron law succinctly expressed by David Sloan Wilson and E.O. Wilson, that, “selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. All else is commentary” (see Wilson, 2019: 78). Although one might think that this would lead to a focus on cooperative behaviour within groups, an argument is developed from Turchin (2010) that trade between strangers developed alongside large-scale cooperation that resulted from wars of conquest. The increasingly complex relations between war, capitalism and democracy are next briefly outlined in relation to the period from the First World War to the present. Following this are brief discussions of multilevel selection in relation to organisation and marketing. Finally arguments about maladaptive behaviour and group dissolution are discussed from two perspectives.

Chapter Six: Social Theories

This chapter first explores consumer identity and difference through a brief discussion of structuralism, ranging from de Saussure to Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes and specifically in the context of marketing to discuss contributions made by Varda Leymore and Judith Williamson. In part two discussion turns briefly to consider critiques of structuralism by Stephanie O’Dononoe from the perspective of uses and gratifications theory, and to Richard Elliot from reader-response theory perspective. The third part on post-structuralist approaches is given over largely to a discussion of Pierre Bourdieu and its critique in the name of the cultural omnivore. Last but not least there is a brief discussion of the vexed question of gender

Chapter Seven: Psychoanalytic Theories

The aim of the first section of this chapter is to convey something of Freud’s ideas on psychoanalysis and to illustrate them with examples that are relevant to the context of consumption. It is in no way intended to be comprehensive and one of the major limitations is that it fails to capture the evolution of Freud’s ideas over time. That some of them can seem irrelevant today is partly due to the changing nature of social mores particularly in relation to sexuality, where it is now well over one hundred years since his classic piece was published. That said in developing his theory Freud drew widely from the ancients as well as from the medical knowledge of his time such that his account is infused with richness and depth of understanding for those who care to look.

The contribution of Jacques Lacan, known as the “French Freud” is more difficult to discuss. Like his mentor Lacan also developed and refined his theory and concepts of the course of his life. While Freud’s exposition is generally clear and his reasoning often a delight to follow, Lacan’s can be anything but, raising the question as to why focus on him to the exclusion of dozens of other psychoanalysts, including luminaries such as Adler, Jung, Klein and Fromm? This is perhaps firstly, becuase Lacan’s cultural explanation of the Oedipus complex was more palatable to modern sensibilities as it de-literalizes Freud to argue that, regardless of our possession of a penis, we must all cede a large part of our infantile narcissistic enjoyment if we are to become functioning members of society and it is how this transition is achieved that gives rise to a personality structure that is neurotic, perverse or psychotic. Secondly, despite its opacity, Lacan’s work was influential for Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Helen Cixious, Luce Irigary and Slavoz Zizek, Teresa Brennan and Renata Salecl who amongst others, were sufficiently stimulated or stung by this to develop their own explanations or conceptions of the subject. Additionally, Lacan can productively be read alongside that of contemporaries such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser and Rene Girard. The psychoanalytic focus on the darker aspects of human motivation has inspired academics and practitioners in the arts and cultural studies. Lacan, who was associated with the DADA and Surrealist movements and film noir, exemplified in the work of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, remains a favourite for psychoanalytically inspired readings of the arts.

Part IV: Ch. 8: The Consuming Body

You will notice that this “part” comprises just one chapter on the body. I should mention that it was originally intended to house two chapters, one devoted to a comparative discussion of approaches to the body and the second to a similar discussion of ‘disorderly consumption’. While the second chapter has been completed in draft form I have decided to hold it back for the moment at least.

Much of the material introduced in chapter eight will possibly be regarded as novel, and it is also possibly more dense and difficult to digest than some of the other chapters. Which in my opinion is all to the good, although unfortunately it has turned out be not so much a comparison, as an exposition of different approaches. Perhaps I might be able to get round to that at a later date, although I really do want to let this project go.

The chapter is not meant to be in any way comprehensive and is inevitably quite general particularly when discussing social theories. As is the case in the preceding chapters I very much regret not including many contributions by consumer researchers and others on this topic but have had to circumscribe discussion in what is already an over-long chapter which aims to discuss social, emotional, phenomenological and neuro-psychoanalytic accounts of the body.

JFD 5th Feb. 2026

¹ Sober & Wilson, 1998, 2000a, 2000b; Richerson & Boyd, 2005; Henrich & Boyd, 2001, Henrich et al., 2001, Henrich, 2005, Richardson et al., 2016)