The Politics of Consumption: A Re-inquiry on Thompson and Haytko's (1997) "Speaking of Fashion."

This article explores Thompson and Haytko's (1997) interpretation of fashion discourses by bringing together two opposing perspectives on consumers' use of objects as signs. The first perspective assumes that the consumer has free reign in the play of signs (i.e., the consumer is constituting). The second assumes that the consumer is imprisoned by the signs and codes of the historical moment (i.e., the consumer is constituted). The dialectical and discursive tension between these two perspectives is used as an orienting framework in the hermeneutic analyses of 14 phenomenological interviews. Thompson and Haytko's (1997) findings/claims remain pertinent in a professional, middle-class context. In addition, this research contributes to their lived hegemony premise by emphasizing the dominating tendencies of marketing systems. Copyright 2002 by the University of Chicago.

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