Consumer Culture, Anti-Consumption and Ethical Restraint: A Theoretical Framework for De-Influencing

This chapter examines consumption culture, anti-consumption, and ethical restraint as interconnected dimensions of contemporary capitalism. It argues that consumption can no longer be understood merely as an economic act aimed at satisfying needs; rather, it functions as a cultural, symbolic, and communicative regime through which meanings, identities, and social distinctions are produced. Building on the works of Baudrillard, Bauman, Bourdieu, and Featherstone, the study demonstrates how postmodern consumption organizes desire, visibility, and selfhood through signs, images, and lifestyle performances. It further shows that media, branding, and public relations play a constitutive role in naturalizing consumption and integrating it into everyday life. The chapter also analyzes anti-consumption as a heterogeneous field that includes political consumerism, voluntary simplicity, identity-based resistance, and ethical critique. While these practices create significant spaces of reflexivity and contestation, their transformative capacity remains limited because capitalist markets can absorb, commodify, and recirculate critique itself. Ethical restraint is therefore discussed not as a complete break from consumption, but as a morally and politically charged attempt to reorganize consumption within structurally unequal conditions. The chapter concludes that contemporary debates, including de-influencing, should be understood as struggles over meaning within consumption culture rather than as definitive exits from it, particularly in digitally mediated, platform-centered consumer environments.