Abstract:

Due to the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the spread of production and consumption paved the way for consumption, especially excessive and luxury consumption, ceasing to be the privilege of aristocrats and other upper social classes. With the development of modern capitalism, the bourgeoisie/middle classes, which started to rise in the West, especially in America and Europe alongside the aristocracy in many spaces, began to utilize consumption and objects of consumption as a manifestation of their own class differences and privileges just like the aristocracy did. Many nineteenth century sociologists, notably Weber, Simmel, and Veblen, approached this process “positively” with great hopes. However, by the twentieth century, French sociologists, especially Lefebvre and members of the Frankfurt School, were pessimistic to modern consumer society and consumer culture. This pessimistic approach, as can be seen in the example of the Frankfurt school, described the prevalence of mass production and consumption in the modern era as the “end/death of the individual”. Contrary to this pessimistic view, de Certeau proposes that consumers who are considered to be passive spontaneously transform any kind of products and production objects imposed on them by the dominant order and/or capitalist system into artistic forms by means of (different) ways of using and reproducing those objects in everyday life. Certeau elaborates the ways of action and production created by the consumer against the “strategies” of the system in daily life as “tactics” of the user/consumer. Therefore, this study aims to reveal Certeau’s original approach to modern consumer society and to try to explore his views on this subject through his two basic concepts, namely “strategy” and “tactics”. This study also tries to illustrate that De Certeau’s analysis of modern consumption culture and his concepts of strategy and tactics offer new perspectives to those who are working on education policies.

Keywords: