Consumer Culture and the Paradox of Choice in an Ambivalent Era of Emancipation of Individual Freedoms

Introduction

Contemporary consumer culture is characterized by ambivalence in the form of a series of paradoxes, conflicts, and all manner of contradictions (Roubal, 2023).

Among the most serious problems facing the world are growing aspirations of societies (economically developed and otherwise) in terms of quantifying their material standard of living and the desire for more intensive and stable engagement in the sphere of ordinary consumption. This is linked to a hypertrophy of the consumerist lifestyle and a progression of hedonistic values, both of which are massively supported by the marketing industry. On the other hand, this has evidently led to a reckless plundering of natural resources, enormous pollution of the planet, and irreversible climate change, situations demanding an active approach of changing human behavior and thinking (Howarth et al., 2022). According to some researchers, the Earth is even becoming a place hazardous to life (Richardson et al., 2023).

The ambivalent nature of consumer culture is not an isolated phenomenon, but a reflection of broader and deeper changes in the social reality of late modern societies undergoing globalization trends in the form of structural changes in political and social life and the universalization and unification of many areas of the market environment of economic activities. At the same time, sociologists have reported findings on the accelerated pace of life and impulsive nature of consumer-oriented societies (Roberts, 2014), transformations of value orientations and the search for alternative (more economical and environmentally conscious) forms of lifestyles (Soper 2023), or intensifying individualization and problematic identity formation (Elliot et al., 2019). Last but not least, we cannot overlook the rapid development in the areas of digitalization, technologization, automation, and robotization, or the penetration of artificial intelligence into the routine activities of everyday life, along with the series of ethical and philosophical questions and uncertain prognoses of future directions from the perspective of humanity’s values (Leonhard, 2016; Bridle, 2018).

Patterns of consumption behavior are also fundamentally changing, namely in the context of various events and developments such as the COVID-19 crisis in recent years (Ayman, 2023; Satish et al., 2021; Anastasiadou et al., 2020; Loxton et al., 2020). Patterns of consumption behavior have subsequently been undergoing another wave of social, political, and economic events and unexpected developments. In the context of the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, and rising inflation, a thesis is emerging known as the cost-of-living crisis (Lapavitsas et al., 2023; Khan, 2022).

Despite all these social, political, and economic changes, which affect the different parameters of consumer culture with varying intensity, depth, and duration, what remains constant is the trend of strengthening individual consumer freedoms and the associated progression of options for consumer choice as a condition for the emancipation of human freedom in consumerist types of societies (B. Schwartz, 2004; Iyengar, 2010; Sharma & Nair, 2017).

First, the goal of this chapter is to explain the transformation of the consumer mentality by reinterpreting the still applicable ideas of Bauman (Bauman, 2007; 2008; 2013). We point to the ambivalent nature of the emancipation of individual freedoms, decision space, and independence with its accompanying increases in uncertainty, doubt, and the fragility of consumer identity. The consumer mentality, most likely resembling that of a hunter or a competitor, is formed in constant interactions with the institutional structures of consumer culture, authentically reflecting its contemporary ambivalent nature. At the same time, we expand on Bauman’s hypothesis of the crisis of consumer integrity in terms of the extension of freedom of choice.