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Les Editions IFM/REGARD have published a French edition of Pour une anthropologie de la consommation, Le monde des biens, (The world of Goods) by Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood. This is the first French language publication of a book that was first published in London in 1979 and can be said to be the founding work of the anthropology of consumption. The work tries to reconcile an anthropological vision of consumption based on the notion of desire and an economic approach that is more centered on an analysis of consumer behavior. The book shows to what extent consumer behavior is based on cultural practices and the collective unconscious. It was the first book to establish the now widely accepted idea that consumer goods communicate as much as they shape the identity of the individual and the system of social interaction.
Mary Douglas (1921-2007) was a major figure in British social anthropology. She was Professor in anthropology for many years at London (University College) then in the U.S., she is the author of an important body of work that spans over fifty years and has been translated into many languages including Pollution (1967), Purity and danger (1966) and How institutions think (1986), now considered to be classics. Her work is today considered to be a reference for sociologists, anthropologists and economists.
Baron Isherwood is a British economist and consultant in urban development. |
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