This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the issues,concepts and theories through which people have tried to understandconsumer culture throughout the modern period, and puts the currentstate of thinking into a broader context. Thematically organized, the book shows how the central aspects ofconsumer culture - such as needs, choice, identity, status,alienation, objects, culture - have been debated within moderntheories, from those of earlier thinkers such as Marx and Simmel tocontemporary forms of post-structuralism and postmodernism. Thisapproach introduces consumer culture as a subject which - far frombeing of narrow or recent interest - is intimately tied to thecentral issues of modern times and modern social thought. With its reviews of major theorists set within a full account ofthe development of the subject, this book should be of interest toundergraduate and postgraduate students in the many disciplineswhich now study consumer culture, including communications andcultural studies, anthropology and history.