The Active Consumer

Marina Bianchi

1. Introduction, Part 1 The Hedonics of taste: utility, novelty and change2. Choice without utility? Some reflections on the loose foundations of standard consumer theory 3. Economic change, choice and innovation in consumption 4. Taste for novelty and novel tastes: the role of human agency in consumption Part II Consumers as producers and problem solvers: consumption capabilities5. Cognition and innovation 6. The organization of consumption 7. Consumer goals a journeys into the unknown Part III Adoption and diffusion of new goods: illustrative analyses 8. Work and the sirens of consumption in eighteenth-century London 9. Silk purses out of sows' ears: mass rarefaction of consumption and the emerging consumer-collector 10. Novelty, imitation and habit formation in a Scitovskain model of consumption Part IV Consumption and communication 11. Consumption in postmodernity: social structuration an dteh construction of the shelf 12. On the consumption of signs