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Saving, Spending, and Self-Control: Cognition versus Consumer Culture

Department of Economics, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20016, mstarr{at}american.edu

Recent economic literature puts forth "behavioral" perspectives on self-control as a means of understanding oddities of consumer behavior: spending too much, saving too little, borrowing too much on costly credit cards. This article argues that the behavioral emphasis on cognition overlooks the extent to which issues of self-control are framed, elaborated, and sustained as problematics of contemporary consumer culture. As such, they are rooted as much in the social, cultural, and economic dynamics of capitalism as they are in the human mind.

Key Words: consumption • self-control • consumer culture • economic representations

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Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 39, No. 2, 214-229 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0486613407302484


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