The Labyrinth, Postmodernity and Ritual

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Consumption and CITs

One of the most significant features of postmodern times is that we live in a culture based on consumption. In modernity identity and social integration were found in production and the work place. Now 'consumption has become production', and 'individual choice' has replaced progress as the core value and belief of our society'. Baudrillard says that:

consumption is a system of meaning like a language.. commodities and objects, like words.. constitute a global, arbitrary and coherent system of signs, a cultural system.. a code with which our entire society communicates and speaks to itself.

This consumer culture is facilitated by the growth of communication and information technologies (CITs) and new media whose impact cannot be underestimated. Within this consumer culture social interaction and organisation take on a new cultural pattern. People find and construct meaning routes through everyday life to help them negotiate the terrain. These are no longer simply defined by tradition, family or geography.

The range of choices confronting people is immense. In part they negotiate meaning in society via networks and relationships and the construction of identity (or identities). Both are related. Identity is increasingly seen as something constructed via taste and selective consumption, and is used to make distinctions from others. The networks of relationships are often those from whom approval is sought through similar lifestyle and tastes. There is a sense in which this can lead to a 'symbolic membership' of a group or network.

The flows of information round these networks are increasing aided by the CITs and the whole process seems to be very fluid and changing. Usually they have some location in place but not necessarily and certainly not exclusively. Culture is increasingly fragmented and there are a range of worldviews, meanings, lifestyles and subcultures at play. Culture is in this sense a 'site for contested meanings' within which people find manifold ways of 'making do', of living 'the practice everyday life'.

The implications for religious practice are enormous. Lyon suggests that within a consumer culture, religion is best viewed as a dynamic cultural resource rather than an organisational form or fixed entity. This is a neat move and it certainly seems to be the way a lot of individuals and groups treat it, though I suspect it would be one resisted by the guardians of declining religious institutions.