The course examines why we consume, what we consume, how we consume, and how we have been “civilized” into consumers. It considers how goods attain symbolic meanings, how patterns of social inequality and cultural identities are created and reproduced through consumption, how practices and institutions of everyday life (family, leisure, urban environments) are increasingly organized in relation to consumption. It also discusses the function of consumption for broader political and economic systems, and surveys social movements that gather the discontents of consumerism (environmentalists, anti-globalization activists and moralists).