The Unmanageable Consumer

The Unmanageable Consumer has long been one of my favorite books in the sociology of consumption. This long overdue third edition has updated and revised the basic argument in many ways. Most importantly, it now offers a new chapter on the consumer as worker or, more generally, the prosumer. It also takes into account the fact that consumption, better hyper-consumption, is not only still with us, but if anything it is accelerating. The continued increase in hyper-consumption and the rapidly changing nature of consumption/prosumption, as well as their relationship to one another, make this edition more relevant than ever. Assign it to your classes (I have… and will again) and read it for your edification.

-- George Ritzer
This is a remarkable and important book. The new edition updates consumer cultural studies to take into account austerity politics and the economic crisis, and the impact these have had on how we think about and experience everyday practices of shopping and consuming. The authors also build on and maintain the lively and challenging argument from the previous volumes which sees the consumer as an unstable space for a multiplicity of often contradictory responses which can unsettle the various strategies on the part of contemporary capitalism to have us buy more. The volume by Gabriel and Lang will be of great value to Masters students and undergraduates as well faculty across a range of humanities and social science courses. -- Angela McRobbie
The book exemplifies how social science should be: engaged, insightful, imaginative, scholarly and highly socially and politically relevant. Strongly recommended to students, academics as well as all people interested in understanding our time and themselves in an age of consumerism and false promises. This is a book that almost everyone would benefit from reading. -- Mats Alvesson
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding one of the most complex and multifaceted concepts of our time: the idea of the consumer. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
-- Mark Tadajewski
Through ten diverse and intriguing "portraits" of the consumer, the authors have somehow combined academic rigour with topical insights and appropriately provocative challenges. In all sorts of ways, The Unmanageable Consumer is a surprising delight! -- Jonathon Porritt
Engagement with this book should certainly be encouraged across the disciplines. This is because despite the books’ social-scientific tone and academic relevance, the authors continue to balance their account of the tightly coiled interrelations of the [discussed] themes and phenomena with a pertinent yet accessible unpacking of how their complex formation is central to consumerism’s ongoing and intensified centrality to the narratives in and of our everyday lives. -- Peter Watt, Department of Management, York St John Univer