The Electronic Journal of the Consumption Studies Group
Consumption, Culture and Society is the Portuguese-Brazilian multidisciplinary, electronic journal
of the network created around the Consumption Studies Group and the ENEC – the Brazilian
Consumption Studies Meetings – which have occurred in Rio de Janeiro since 2004. In the last four
years, the research group and the ENEC have enlarged their scope and became a PortugueseBrazilian initiative, consolidating a large network of researchers and institutions in Brazil and
Portugal such as Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Universidade Federal Fluminense,
and Universidade de Nova Lisboa that now support this electronic journal.
Consumption, Culture and Society emerged around the conviction that, in the past few decades,
consumption had become an autonomous field for academic reflection within the social sciences that
could not be adequately analyzed as an epiphenomenon of production and marketing, nor reduced
only to strategies of social positioning. Consumption as a dimension of materiality –understood as
the relationship among people, objects, goods and services – is today one of the most important
mechanisms of social reproduction, as well as a site for political action and identity-making in
contemporary society. An analysis of consumption in this light assumes a new urgency today as a
whole range of “emerging countries” embark on strategies for promoting their domestic markets with
a special focus on mass popular consumption.Such strategies, moreover, often launched under the
banner of social inclusion, have to confront these challenges in a global context in which legitimate
consumption increasingly has to pass the test of ever shifting criteria of “sustainability”.
Consumption, Culture and Society has as its goal to advance academic exchange between
different research communities and intellectual traditions by providing a space of interlocution
predicated on the interdisciplinary viewpoints offered by researchers from a range of countries and
universities. To this end, the journal embraces contributions from a diverse range of disciplines and
conceptual frameworks.
With the conviction that a critical academic mass has now been created around the Consumption
Studies Group and the ENEC, the journal will be launched at the VI ENEC in September, 2012.
Consumption, Culture and Society is published in English in order to amplify the academic
exchange among researchers from all over the world interested in consumption and materiality. It
appears on a bi-annual basis and all articles are peer reviewed. We are honoured to count on the
contribution of an international, diversified and expert editorial board.
EDITORS:
Editor-in-Chief: Lívia Barbosa (Universidade Federal Fluminense and Coordinator of the
Consumption Studies Group, Brazil)
General Editor, Brazil: John Wilkinson (Programa de Pós-Graduação de Ciências Sociais em
Desenvolvimento, Agricultura e Sociedade, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
General Editor, Portugal: Marta Rosales (Universidade de Nova Lisboa, Portugal)
Laura Graziela (Programa de Pós-Graduação de Antropologia, Universidade Federal Fluminense,
Brazil)
Fátima Portilho (Programa de Pós-Graduação de Ciências Sociais em Desenvolvimento, Agricultura
e Sociedade, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, and Co-coordinator of the Consumption
Studies Group, Brazil)
Leticia Veloso (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia e Direito and Programa de Graduação
em Sociologia, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil)
INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Ricardo Abramovay, Departamento de Economia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Lívia Barbosa, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil
Jose Augusto Drummond, Centro de Desenvolvimento Sustentável, Universidade de Brasília, Brazil
Maria Fonte, Dipartimento di Economia, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italia
David Goodman,Visiting Professor, Department of Geography, King’s College London, England,
and Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.
Laura Graziela, Programa de Pós-Graduação de Antropologia, Universidade Federal Fluminense,
Brazil
Guliz Gus, Department of Business Administration, Bilkent University, Turkey
João Paulo Martins, Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal
Michele Micheletti, Department of Political Science, University of Stockholm, Sweden
Daniel Miller, University College London, England
Fátima Portilho, Programa de Pós-Graduação de Ciências Sociais em Desenvolvimento, Agricultura
e Sociedade, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Carmen Rial, Departamento de Antropologia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil
Marta Rosales, Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia and Faculdade de Ciências Sociais
e Humanas, Universidade de Nova Lisboa, Portugal
Roberta Sassatelli, Dipartimento di Studi Sociali I Politici, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italia
Frank Trentmann, Department of History, Birkbeck College, England
Susana Trovão, Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia and Faculdade de Ciências
Sociais e Humanas, Universidade de Nova Lisboa, Portugal
Monica Truninger, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Letícia Veloso, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia e Direito and Programa de Graduação
em Sociologia, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil
Alan Warde, School of Sciences & Sociology, University of Manchester, England
Richard Wilk, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
John Wilkinson, Programa de Pós-Graduação de Ciências Sociais em Desenvolvimento, Agricultura
e Sociedade, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil